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HTTP/2 200 date: Thu, 22 Jan 2026 11:58:57 GMT content-type: application/xml server: cloudflare last-modified: Thu, 22 Jan 2026 10:22:42 GMT nel: {"report_to":"cf-nel","success_fraction":0.0,"max_age":604800} report-to: {"group":"cf-nel","max_age":604800,"endpoints":[{"url":"https://a.nel.cloudflare.com/report/v4?s=svK908RiODb%2BvVF93I1tFGZGE4Zcvw0eIPjQtXxaq2jHKrim4ReLHkzzMl80Ivp%2FqRZj2Ofs9Q1pdulLNZL0AqL6uD3Lh2phuKptw%2Fk2xr4%3D"}]} cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC etag: W/"4a190-608d7-648f76bc782b5" content-encoding: gzip cf-ray: 9c1ee1e97a8e851c-BOM alt-svc: h3=":443"; ma=86400 Unfogged w/ Comments https://www.unfogged.com/ en-us Unfogged Copyright 2026 2026-01-21T20:58:50-07:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 The Thin Blue Line https://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2026_01_18.html#019110 There are a few states that barely go Democratic on the strength of minority voting in one urban center. Minnesota is one. Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Arizona are others with particularly thin margins and specifically Hispanic voting blocks. I've seen it said that national elections are under the control of too many different organizations to be fixed by a central power, but when I read about how many people in Minneapolis are afraid to venture out, I think Republicans already know exactly how to do this.... 19110@https://www.unfogged.com/ There are a few states that barely go Democratic on the strength of minority voting in one urban center. Minnesota is one. Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Arizona are others with particularly thin margins and specifically Hispanic voting blocks. I've seen it said that national elections are under the control of too many different organizations to be fixed by a central power, but when I read about how many people in Minneapolis are afraid to venture out, I think Republicans already know exactly how to do this.

Comments (3)

Comments on this Entry:

1 (Opinionated KKK on Jan 21, 2026 9:24 PM)

Republicans? String 'em up!

2 (apostropher on Jan 22, 2026 2:01 AM)

I think it's unlikely they succeed at suppressing turnout. More likely is Democrats take back Congress and the White House goes straight to ignoring it just like they do the courts.

3 (heebie on Jan 22, 2026 2:23 AM)

It's hard to make a prediction about how terrorizing a community in January will affect turnout it November. Who's to say that it won't mobilize and energize turnout?

]]> 2026-01-21T20:58:50-07:00 More escapism https://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2026_01_18.html#019109 I had THC beverages for the first time, over the weekend. These are (weirdly) legal in Texas, although they do take down your license info when you buy them, which also feels a little weird. I think these are way better than gummies! They might have given me a headache, though, which sadly would be a dealbreaker.... 19109@https://www.unfogged.com/ I had THC beverages for the first time, over the weekend. These are (weirdly) legal in Texas, although they do take down your license info when you buy them, which also feels a little weird.

I think these are way better than gummies! They might have given me a headache, though, which sadly would be a dealbreaker.

Comments (52)

Comments on this Entry:

1 (Moby Hick on Jan 21, 2026 6:51 AM)

Do they take your info because you aren't supposed to have a gun if you use weed?

2 (Mossy Character on Jan 21, 2026 6:54 AM)

Still holding out for rhododendron honey.

3 (heebie on Jan 21, 2026 7:06 AM)

Why would they ever want to limit guns in any context? Those are weird words to string together.

4 (Moby Hick on Jan 21, 2026 7:09 AM)

Someone told me that to get medical marijuana in Pennsylvania, you were stopping yourself from getting a concealed carry permit. But maybe they were just paranoid?

5 (Moby Hick on Jan 21, 2026 7:10 AM)

We don't have legal, recreational THC.

6 (lurid keyaki on Jan 21, 2026 7:14 AM)

Dry January is unexpectedly kicking my ass. I've gone through long periods of sobriety and, for the most part, I actually do feel better (then relapse into drinking because wine is tasty and asceticism is tedious). This time, I'm getting nothing out of it except a vague abstract sense of being healthier, plus being less sleepy in the evenings. I have ten more days to troubleshoot and decide if I will continue into Dry February, or make it a month-long Mardi Gras.

7 (heebie on Jan 21, 2026 7:16 AM)

We have a strangely evolved legalized workaround that was nearly outlawed last summer. But it turned out that the cannabis lobby has become wealthy enough to neutralize the alcohol's lobbying effort to ban the Delta 8s and 9s, which convinced Abbott not to sign Ken Paxton's years long crusade against the things.

8 (Moby Hick on Jan 21, 2026 7:18 AM)

My math stopped at like delta two.

9 (United Launch Alliance on Jan 21, 2026 7:22 AM)

Delta 4 will take you far.

10 (Spike on Jan 21, 2026 7:22 AM)

If they could start putting THC in Diet Coke, that's all I'd ever need.

11 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 21, 2026 7:30 AM)

10: Have never tried marijuana and don't think I would like it, but I approve.

6: I hardly drink at all and mostly find I don't actually enjoy wine. What I find fun is "binge" drinking which I do very rarely (once every 3 or 4 years). It consists of 2-3.5 cocktails not super strong (gin and tonic for simple options, mojito or sidecar if a fancier joint) over the course of an evening. I feel more social when I drink hard liquor. Beer and wine mostly make me sleepy.

Although I was ok drinking wine in France, but the glass sizes there are smaller.

12 (Moby Hick on Jan 21, 2026 7:36 AM)

I don't think I'd like weed either. I do like drinking and mostly what they define as binge drinking. I stop when my face starts to feel tingling, because I don't want to have trouble walking home.

13 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 21, 2026 7:38 AM)

I mostly only drink at reunions.

14 (heebie on Jan 21, 2026 7:41 AM)

I've basically stopped drinking altogether. Once the hangover headaches began to kick in while I was still enjoying my beverages, the night of, it lost all appeal.

15 (Moby Hick on Jan 21, 2026 7:42 AM)

There are like five bartenders that know my order.

16 (heebie on Jan 21, 2026 7:44 AM)

I don't really like gummies, because it's too easy to get way too stoned, and it lasts way too long. So I am mostly totally sober these days. (I don't anticipate drinking THC drinks that often, but I'm glad they exist.)

17 (heebie on Jan 21, 2026 7:45 AM)

(And occasionally mushrooms. I will forever love psychedelics.)

18 (Minivet on Jan 21, 2026 7:45 AM)

Everyone's coming around to recreational one way or another. States with a majority of US population now have it fully legal (so not Texas). Trump just did the same weak rescheduling that Biden had in the works. The ban is very much whimpering out.

So the beverages do have a joint-or-more THC quantity?

19 (Nathan Williams on Jan 21, 2026 7:54 AM)

Maybe I should try some. I would really like to be able to enjoy this substance that so many other people seem to enjoy. But I really, really hate the physical act of smoking, and with gummies I've experienced either (a) nothing or (b) unpleasant vertigo. Nothing enjoyable to be had so far.

20 (Cyrus on Jan 21, 2026 7:57 AM)

Never tried THC beverages before, or even heard of them as far as I know. I'm curious, but I've also never tried edibles and I feel like that should come first. I'll try to get around to it this summer. It's much easier then than during the school year, due to the kid's activities.

I'm a tiny bit annoyed that Cassandane is resolutely uninterested. Her body, her choice, etc., but I'd feel better about this stuff if I could share it with her. Also, I've cut back on my alcohol intake a little in recent months and maybe should still cut back further and replacing it with weed might help.

There's a sense in which any drug use is bad, of course, but these days I feel less bad about it then I would have felt in more sane times, and I feel like "more escapism" implies a similar idea. Take your self-medication where you can find it.

21 (Moisture Farmer's Opinionated Nephew on Jan 21, 2026 8:00 AM)

8, 9: RED 5 STANDING BY

22 (apostropher on Jan 21, 2026 8:02 AM)

THC beverages are everywhere now. Total Wine has hundreds of them on their website. They are way, way better than gummies because they come on within 20-30 minutes instead of at some random point in the next two hours. Much easier to control and predict. Also I apparently don't absorb gelatin for shit and have to eat superhuman amounts of gummies to even have them register, while the drinks work just fine even with my sky-high tolerance.

23 (Moisture Farmer's Opinionated Nephew's Mentor on Jan 21, 2026 8:03 AM)

21 is on topic because escapism.

24 (heebie on Jan 21, 2026 8:04 AM)

19,20: IM-limited-O, the beverages were much easier to titrate to be mild, and they definitely end much quicker than gummies or edibles. Like within 90 minutes, I felt like the drink had worn off. I had two drinks over the course of an evening and it felt great.

25 (apostropher on Jan 21, 2026 8:06 AM)

Something like 1/4 to 1/3 of the bars here have at least one on the menu, they're in every vape shop (along with the plant itself), and they're in at least half of the convenience stores. Note: nothing has ever been legalized in NC.

26 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 21, 2026 8:08 AM)

I knew a state court judge who felt that it would be wrong to use weed while on the bench, because it was illegal still under Federal law. One of the things she was most looking forward to during retirement was smoking weed.

27 (apostropher on Jan 21, 2026 8:16 AM)

Most of the drinks are 5 or 10 mg, which is a pretty mild buzz, even for beginners. I prefer stronger (30, 50, and 100 mg cans are available) but I'm also an every-day smoker with a high metabolism, so.

28 (Moby Hick on Jan 21, 2026 8:18 AM)

When my dad became a judge, he stopped telling the cable company we only had one tv.

29 (ajay on Jan 21, 2026 8:22 AM)

I knew a state court judge who felt that it would be wrong to use weed while on the bench, because it was illegal still under Federal law.

Because courtrooms are generally no-smoking areas?

30 (heebie on Jan 21, 2026 8:24 AM)

Most of the drinks are 5 or 10 mg, which is a pretty mild buzz, even for beginners.

10 knocks me over. I am very wimpy. My friend was making mixed drinks, and the shot was 5 mg I think, and I had a half-shot in each drink. So ymmv.

31 (Moby Hick on Jan 21, 2026 8:49 AM)

Don't drink and drive.

32 (apostropher on Jan 21, 2026 9:43 AM)

30: I suppose there are probably differences based on body size.

33 (apostropher on Jan 21, 2026 9:44 AM)

And, of course, everyone's neurochemistry is different.

34 (lourdes kayak on Jan 21, 2026 10:21 AM)

2 to 3 milligrams in an edible is enough to send me to the moon, and I'm small but not that small. I've been trying to enjoy THC off and on for 25 years but it's never going to replace alcohol as my drug of choice, which is honestly a shame since it would surely be better for my health. I just don't like having the fast Fourier transform applied to my cognition.

35 (Moby Hick on Jan 21, 2026 10:42 AM)

I really love alcohol. It's just the best.

36 (SP on Jan 21, 2026 10:51 AM)

100mg (aka one Dowd unit) in one drink seems like a hell of a lot. That's an entire pack of gummies the way they package them here.

37 (apostropher on Jan 21, 2026 11:07 AM)

(realizing there may be an Overton window at work here)

38 (Moby Hick on Jan 21, 2026 11:15 AM)

You can smoke if you stick your head out the window far enough.

39 (Osgood on Jan 21, 2026 12:39 PM)

I smoked weed a few times around age 18, then figured I'd try gummies as the bougie way back to THC in my 40s. I was disappointed when my only reaction -- even to the 2.5mg microdose, and across 3 different brands -- was nausea and vomiting. A customer service rep at one of the companies told me nausea is a common reaction to over-intoxication, which .. was not my problem.

Smoking still works fine, apart from self-imposed stigma and an uninterested spouse, per Cyrus's 20. I wonder now if a beverage would be another smoke-free way to get mellow, but my concern is that as long as the drug is getting into my blood via my stomach I'll have the same issue.

40 (No Longer Middle Aged Man on Jan 21, 2026 1:57 PM)

32 Wasn't going on body weight rather than brain weight how some researchers several deacdes ago way overdosed an elephant with LSD?

41 (Moby Hick on Jan 21, 2026 2:00 PM)

One of the ways.

42 (Moby Hick on Jan 21, 2026 2:20 PM)

If the elephant kicks in $200, you don't want to give him less than $200 worth no matter the science.

43 (Mooseking on Jan 21, 2026 2:34 PM)

My wife uses CBD, CBG, etc. gummies mostly as sleep aids, since there's usually a day or two a month where she'd otherwise spend half the night staring at the ceiling. It was also a good stopgap when the doctors weren't taking her pain seriously, particularly before she persuaded them to prescribe the injector that treats her AS. So far, I haven't been interested, but it's nice to have as a backup option if pain becomes an issue.

44 (apostropher on Jan 21, 2026 2:50 PM)

I am a big CBG fan. The best of the minor cannabinoids.

45 (marcel proust on Jan 21, 2026 3:13 PM)

43.1 Beige?

46 (Moby Hick on Jan 21, 2026 3:40 PM)

The ceilings in my house a beige. We were, just like the first comment, too lazy to tape to paint the ceiling white.

47 ( on Jan 21, 2026 3:41 PM)

I think local news replace all the copy editors.

48 (Moby Hick on Jan 21, 2026 3:42 PM)

That was me. And has a typo.

49 (Stendhal on Jan 21, 2026 4:30 PM)

The Sharterhouse of Pittsburgh

50 (SP on Jan 21, 2026 4:39 PM)

OMG my kid just told us his nickname on his college team is "12 girls one (kid's name)" because he recently broke up with his girlfriend and everyone on the women's team hopefully hangs around him.
(Relevant because parties and drinking)

51 (lurid keyaki on Jan 21, 2026 4:48 PM)

Stendhal + Michael Chabon - Eugene Sue, I guess?

The posts about how DHS is trying to get its agents killed are unnerving.

52 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 22, 2026 3:21 AM)

For not entirely clear reasons* I have avoided cannabis since I stopped using it in my early-30s (was at times a pretty heavy user). However, at a relative's house I inadvertently grabbed a can of THC-infused drink and really did not seem to notice a thing. I wish I had noted the dosage; at the time I assumed it must have been a very small amount say like the equivalent of having a beer. No idea if they package it that way.

*Probably that towards the end I had a few somewhat disturbing bouts of paranoia using pot (it had generally been a very positive experience for me, at least in the moment); in particular I recall one episode in Central Park/Museum of Natural History that sort of freaked me out.

]]> 2026-01-21T06:39:37-07:00 Daydreaming https://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2026_01_18.html#019108 Suppose we knock it out of the park in November. What are the best possible impeachment cases or investigations to undertake? (Or do those cases make voters think that the Democrats aren't serious about the economy? I'm starting to loathe voters, but I guess all the alternatives are worse, to paraphrase whoever said that about democracy.) I really feel like the Democrats need to launch a massive PR campaign on Supreme Court reform. Or rather, constantly refer to it as rotten and corrupt. Don't pitch solutions before selling the average voter on the idea that there's a problem.... 19108@https://www.unfogged.com/ Suppose we knock it out of the park in November. What are the best possible impeachment cases or investigations to undertake?

(Or do those cases make voters think that the Democrats aren't serious about the economy? I'm starting to loathe voters, but I guess all the alternatives are worse, to paraphrase whoever said that about democracy.)

I really feel like the Democrats need to launch a massive PR campaign on Supreme Court reform. Or rather, constantly refer to it as rotten and corrupt. Don't pitch solutions before selling the average voter on the idea that there's a problem.

Comments (83)

Comments on this Entry:

1 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 6:44 AM)

Voters suck, but the way very powerful and/or wealthy people have accommodated/collaborated/boosted/normalized/carried water for Trump is a permanent stain on the idea of an elite with better judgment than the masses.

2 (Doug on Jan 20, 2026 6:59 AM)

Moby, don't you have a cousin or something who could run for Senate as a Democrat in Nebraska and help us out with our daydreams?

For daydreaming purposes, I'm already counting on Roy Cooper in NC and someone who isn't Susan Collins up there in Maine. Plus Mary Peltola in Alaska. As long as I am dreaming, I will postulate that Ken Paxton (TX) will shoot himself in the foot, and that an intra-MAGA bloodletting will oust Whatshisface Cassidy in Louisiana and that John Bel Edwards feels like going back into politics.

3 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 7:07 AM)

Osborn is the best bet in Nebraska. But not related to Tom.

4 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 7:09 AM)

Last race, Osborn was clearly getting some votes from Trump voters and almost won.

5 (Spike on Jan 20, 2026 7:41 AM)

New Hampshire will likely be nominating Chris Pappas for Senate, the most useless, milquetoast centrist Democrat you can imagine.

6 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 20, 2026 7:44 AM)

1: 100%

7 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 20, 2026 7:47 AM)

2: I am super worried about Maine. I feel like nobody with a political future wants to run against Collins.

8 (Spike on Jan 20, 2026 7:57 AM)

Yeah, in Maine I'm really not thrilled with the nazi tattoo guy still hanging around the race instead of making room for another candidate.

9 (heebie on Jan 20, 2026 8:06 AM)

I got admonished over break with my family for thinking ill of the guy with the Nazi tattoo, and I couldn't remember how our collective groupthink had resolved on him.

10 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 8:08 AM)

There are too many Nazis around for me to ignore a Nazi tattoo.

11 (Barry Freed on Jan 20, 2026 8:11 AM)

9 he needs to be kicked to the curb

12 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 20, 2026 8:12 AM)

9: He and his wife announced that they are taking a break from campaigning to pursue IVF treatment in Norway. I don't think he's ready for prime time given his family obligations and his disability status.

Agree with 10. If he wants to try to organize for Medicare for All, he should do that and give up on the Senate race.

13 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 20, 2026 8:23 AM)

10: Agree.

14 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 20, 2026 8:26 AM)

Like I just saw that our former governor endorsed a primary challenger to Steven Lynch.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/01/20/metro/deval-patrick-massachusetts-congress-patrick-roath/

Lynch should retire, but this guy sounds pretty milquetoast and not for the moment at all.

15 (lurid keyaki on Jan 20, 2026 8:27 AM)

If he had any political skills, he would have replaced the Totenkopf with an adorable duck that drinks milkshakes.

16 (Daniel Duck Lewis on Jan 20, 2026 8:32 AM)

MMMMM

17 (Spike on Jan 20, 2026 8:39 AM)

I'm coming around to the idea that people who haven't already held some kind of elected seat in government should not run for Senate. Being a legislator is an important job that requires experience! And its good for these people to have had a few years in the public eye to shake out scandals and see how they actually perform in office.

We have a nice progressive doctor who is running here is NH, and I like a lot of her positions, but her lack of political experience makes her very raw as a candidate.

18 (Barry Freed on Jan 20, 2026 8:50 AM)

17.1 agreed

19 (heebie on Jan 20, 2026 8:51 AM)

So what does Trump get impeached for, in this daydream?

20 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 8:53 AM)

Impeachment isn't really hard to dream. It's conviction that I don't see a path towards.

21 (heebie on Jan 20, 2026 9:00 AM)

Ok, what does he get convicted of, in this delusion?

22 (fake accent on Jan 20, 2026 9:01 AM)

Extrapolating from past results, Trump will get convicted somewhere between impeachments 3 and 4.

23 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 9:02 AM)

Maybe a conviction for hiding the evidence of him raping a minor?

24 (lurid keyaki on Jan 20, 2026 9:25 AM)

Since this is somewhat relevant to elections -> elections in November -> daydreams, this map of "white vote by state in the 2024 presidential election" is kinda fascinating. Numbers are all over the place. Colorado is striking.

25 (politicalfootball on Jan 20, 2026 9:36 AM)

17, 18: I think it's interesting that I disagree with y'all on this. My guess is I'm less of a "throw the bums out" guy than you two are, but a lot of these bums need to be thrown out, and the bench of actual elected officials isn't all that deep.

So we end up with a choice between Nazi Tattoo Dude and Keep The Filibuster Lady. I admit that's a tough choice, but I'd go with the Nazi guy.

26 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 20, 2026 9:40 AM)

25: At this point, I'd go with the brewery guy, but he dropped out when Mills got in.

17: Doesn't need to be anything huge - just something. Although Warren held no elected office but did have government experience.

27 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 20, 2026 9:43 AM)

24: Is N.H. -1.6%? That would make sense. Given how white it is, it would be hard for a Dem to carry the state without white people.

28 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 9:44 AM)

Some of my best friends are white people.

29 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 20, 2026 9:49 AM)

24: Delaware is full of corporate lawyers, but I figured that white people in Maryland would be, at least, teal.

My mother's maternal grandmother was from Oregon, and I think they got their from New England on ship going around the coast of South America. I also think parts of Colorado were attractive to New Englanders.

30 (politicalfootball on Jan 20, 2026 10:05 AM)

21: If polls of Republicans turn away Trump, then pretty much anything can happen. If you get, say, 60-70% approval among Republicans for Trump, then there is a long list of high crimes and misdemeanors to choose from.

I won't hazard a guess as to what it would take for Republicans to defect in meaningful numbers.

31 (Megan on Jan 20, 2026 10:13 AM)

I would love for Trump to be impeached for one of the many, many relatively minor things that would completely take down any other politician. Keeping foreign gifts. Some dumb emolument. Something procedural. Tiny in the scheme of things, but would end any other politician's careers. I would love for his shame and downfall to come in the same sense of scale as other politicians have to live by. Then I want them to start working their way through the Supreme Court Justices.

I wouldn't even mind some 'appearance of wrongdoing' bullshit.

32 (Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) on Jan 20, 2026 10:18 AM)

30: The obvious thing would be for Fox News to decide they're done with him. But that kinda happened after Jan 6, and then they panicked because people were switching to OAN, so it's really hard to know.

33 (Doug on Jan 20, 2026 10:54 AM)

18: Everything.

34 (fake accent on Jan 20, 2026 11:11 AM)

Thanks to Fetterman, I'm not so sure Nazi Tattoo guy won't turn out to be a keep the filibuster guy too.

35 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 11:16 AM)

Fetterman is much worse than a keep the filibuster moderate.

36 (Spike on Jan 20, 2026 11:26 AM)

Is N.H. -1.6%?

Maintaining our reputation as, politically, the worst state in New England.

As long as were fantasizing, it would be great to get more Dem refugees from red states to move here to tip us more into the blue. We're consistently on the knife's edge.

37 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 11:31 AM)

That's in Maine, on the Appalachian Trail.

38 (Spike on Jan 20, 2026 11:35 AM)

NH's section of the Appalachian Trail is the part that you don't fuck around on.

39 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 20, 2026 11:37 AM)

36: Better than the white people in Maryland or Delaware. I thought the mid-Atlantic would do better.

40 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 20, 2026 11:41 AM)

many relatively minor things that would completely take down any other politician.

It's really bizarre how much shit people can get away with when they flood the zone.

41 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 20, 2026 11:42 AM)

36: More likely to get MassHoles who are priced out. Whether these people are Republicans seeking low taxes or just COL refugees who will be Progressive on the local level, I don't know.

42 (Opinionated William Faulkner on Jan 20, 2026 11:43 AM)

39: There was a lot of slavery in those parts, and Mr Lincoln barely kept them in the Union. The past, it isn't even past, I tell you what.

43 (heebie on Jan 20, 2026 11:43 AM)

Trump had better not fucking wear a goddamn tan suit. The shit will hit the motherfucking fan, I tell you.

44 (Opinionated Gordon Gano on Jan 20, 2026 11:45 AM)

33: EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING

45 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 11:47 AM)

Everything is politics now. I can't even buy whole milk to put in my coffee without looking like a Republican. I have to buy skim milk and cream to make my own.

46 (heebie on Jan 20, 2026 11:58 AM)

Totally. I have to pour the milk back out of my cereal and just eat it damp.

47 (fake accent on Jan 20, 2026 12:00 PM)

Everything is politics now.

I joined a movie theater rewards thing last month because it was less expensive over the holiday to join and then buy tickets for family than to buy the tickets without the membership. I was on the fence about staying in the rewards program and then immediately canceled this morning when they sent a promotional email touting the upcoming Melania movie.

48 (Spike on Jan 20, 2026 12:48 PM)

There are a lot of white people in Frederick County.

49 (CharleyCarp on Jan 20, 2026 1:53 PM)

People should just forget the word impeachment. It's clearly useless against Trump.

Things are pretty bad in MT for the midterms. Tester has let it be known that he thinks we should support Seth Bodnar's independent run for the Senate. He's right that Bodnar has a better chance than anyone else talking about the race, but completely wrong that an independent race would work. There is going to be a Democratic nominee, and Republican Daines has an unshakeable 46% in the race already. He can theoretically be beaten, with luck, but not in a 3 way race.
(Bodnar is president of the University, and also a West Point grad. He's not unimpressive in person, but he's never played on this stage, and Daines has a couple of terms in the Senate.

Zinke (Rep for Western MT) has some opponents -- none are well known. Yet.

50 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 2:17 PM)

Nebraska was able to get people to stand aside and let the independent run in a two person race for Senate. I'm assuming they can do the same in 2026.

51 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 3:03 PM)

I guess Nebraska had two Senate seats up in 2024 (special election). So there was a Democrat running for Senate.

52 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 20, 2026 6:31 PM)

I don't even own a whole milk.

Also, given the Careers thread, I feel a bit seen re: the post title.

53 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 7:52 PM)

Why buy the milk when cows are free?

54 (apostropher on Jan 20, 2026 8:36 PM)

All I want is to see is Trump and Miller's battered corpses hanging in a public square like the Mussolini crew. Is that so much to ask?

55 (fake accent on Jan 20, 2026 10:41 PM)

Maybe it'll turn out that Air Force One turned around because they couldn't get clearance to land in Europe. I'm sure people are speculating about other reasons!

56 (ydnew on Jan 21, 2026 3:38 AM)

54: Vought, too.

57 (ajay on Jan 21, 2026 3:42 AM)

All I want is to see is Trump and Miller's battered corpses hanging in a public square like the Mussolini crew.

I'm not a vicious man and I don't want to see them dead. I want to see Miller in the situation to which his political views inevitably lead the people who hold them: squatting on the sidewalk outside the blackened rubble of his house, begging the passing soldiers of the occupying British* army for the chance to shine their boots in exchange for half a tin of corned beef.

*Canadian, French, whatever

58 (Spike on Jan 21, 2026 4:56 AM)

Corned beef is pretty expensive these days. Let him eat SPAM.

59 (Moby Hick on Jan 21, 2026 5:27 AM)

Be careful in Texas. Apparently the forecast is so bad that the internet has pictures of Ted Cruz on a plane headed to a warm beach.

60 (ajay on Jan 21, 2026 5:57 AM)

Corned beef is pretty expensive these days. Let him eat SPAM.

Sorry, my fault, I wasn't clear enough. I do not want to see Miller actually receive any corned beef. Or indeed SPAM. I just want to see him begging for it, in vain.

61 (ajay on Jan 21, 2026 5:59 AM)

"I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favours come with too high a price. I would look up at your lifeless eyes and wave - like this. Can you and your associates arrange this for me, Mr. Morden?"

62 (apostropher on Jan 21, 2026 6:23 AM)

I don't care about seeing them dead. Everybody dies eventually. I want to see their corpses defiled.

63 (Moby Hick on Jan 21, 2026 6:25 AM)

Then you need to find someone to upholster them.

64 (J. D. Vance on Jan 21, 2026 6:54 AM)

Yes.

65 (lurid keyaki on Jan 21, 2026 6:56 AM)

ydnew!! (@ 56)

66 (marcel proust on Jan 21, 2026 7:03 AM)

29.2 RE: Oregon, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_black_exclusion_laws#1857_law

67 (lurid keyaki on Jan 21, 2026 8:45 AM)

||
I have mixed feelings about the Minnesota Rebel Alliance logo. I get that pop culture draws in millions more eyes than anything else, but I think the actual plumage is worth including, AND you have a perfect model of a fiercely protective adult with two fluffy babies on its back that would be compact and graphics-friendly... I guess my point is "lots more loons please."

Apologies for apparently spamming Unfogged with comments about black-and-white waterbirds today. Fake apologies.
|>

68 (Eggplant on Jan 21, 2026 8:56 AM)

lots more loons please
https://bsky.app/profile/whstancil.bsky.social/post/3mcwuxrbg2s2d

69 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 21, 2026 8:57 AM)

Listening to Supreme Court hearings on removing Lisa Cook from the Fed. One of the Justices asked her lawyer Paul Clement what the standard of gross negligence would or should be in a case like this, and without thinking I came up with the same answer he did: "that would be a mixed question of law and fact". To be honest, that standard never made sense to me and always seemed to amount to: this is an area where the jury gets to make up the law. I never thought that would be the answer to a Supreme Court Justice's question though.

70 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 21, 2026 6:07 PM)

67: This has been discussed locally as well. I'd kinda like to see 2 versions: A loon one, with correct plumage, and one for the Minneapolis Mega-Murder with a crow.

71 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 21, 2026 6:21 PM)

Just in case anyone was planning on a flying visit, by the way, it's going to be pretty goddamn tough to buy a restaurant meal in Minneapolis on Friday. Every business with even a modicum of community involvement is either shutting down completely, or turning into a warming station with free coffee/accepting donations. Pretty much every arts organization is joining the general strike. Unions, clergy, individual artists and musicians -- A LOT of people are getting on board with this. Could be literally the biggest non-pandemic shutdown here since 1934. Add to that the fact that it's going to be the coldest day in the last little while, and I think downtown, apart from the protest, is going to be virtually empty. I plan to bundle up in my warmest clothes and head downtown for the protest at 2, now that I can walk again. Not sure how many busses will be running, but some friends are offering rides to people, so maybe I will take one of them up on it. Every day brings new outrages here -- the abduction of four children from the same school district, two of whom have already been shipped off to Texan concentration camps, is currently riling people up quite a bit. But at the same time, there is a lot of really serious solidarity and mutual aid going on. One feels a bit like the character in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: This is what I've been on about THE WHOLE TIME. All those endless hours hashing out the best actions for anarchist organizing when it was me and a dozen other weirdos in a damp basement bookstore, all the protests and work days at the anarchist center, the conferences and keggers and book fairs and radical theater and road trips to visit other groups of smelly weirdos in other towns. And it turns out all we needed for everyone else to get the message about anarchy was a real, no-foolin' fascist in the White House. It's a funny old world.

72 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 21, 2026 6:26 PM)

I do kinda miss the pong of unwashed armpits, patchouli body oil, moldering newsprint and burnt coffee that used to characterize the MPLS anarchist scene though. Not sure how to get the terrorist wine moms to embody that.

73 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 21, 2026 6:31 PM)

I know there's a million of them, but here's the GoFundMe for the 5 year old kid who was first used as bait and then sent to the concentration camp:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-bring-5yearold-liam-home

74 (Spike on Jan 21, 2026 7:01 PM)

ICE has started rounding up Somalis in Lewiston and Portland, Maine. Two of the smallest cities they've hit so far.

75 (Opinionated Greenland on Jan 21, 2026 7:25 PM)

Taco Wednesday!

76 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 21, 2026 10:56 PM)

And now Rachel Maddow is re-posting Crimethinc??? The world really has turned upside down.

77 (ajay on Jan 22, 2026 1:03 AM)

Two of the smallest cities they've hit so far.

And they started in Los Angeles!

There's a definite trend here.

78 (ajay on Jan 22, 2026 2:05 AM)

the use of alcohol before battle was not a standard feature of elephant warfare and, more importantly, that when we consider the dangers and practicalities of employing elephants on the battlefield it is highly doubtful that alcohol was ever used with the intention of intoxicating the animals and inciting them into a frenzy.

79 (Alex on Jan 22, 2026 2:37 AM)

77: OK I definitely want the movie about two bumbling ICE agents trying to arrest the one immigrant in Dixville Notch and Hart's Location, New Hampshire as the last few minutes of the Trump administration tick down and honest, quirky backwoods New England folks do their best to frustrate them.

"At least we'll have achieved *something* to cement our legacy."

80 (Alex on Jan 22, 2026 2:59 AM)

78: ancient military writer after ancient military writer notes how elephants were often as much a danger to their own troops as to the enemy, especially when wounded or frightened.

Maybe the team in 79 bring an elephant with them. The war elephant program is desperate to see at least one of the beasts deployed.

81 (mc on Jan 22, 2026 3:02 AM)

Yet another book I need to finish.

82 (ajay on Jan 22, 2026 3:05 AM)

I definitely want the movie about two bumbling ICE agents trying to arrest the one immigrant in Dixville Notch and Hart's Location, New Hampshire as the last few minutes of the Trump administration tick down

Surely this is set on the eve of Election Day 2028? Because their target is a citizen (of course) and therefore he's trying to make it to the polling station at The Balsams Hotel to vote at midnight, as is their custom. The third act is a huge French-farce-style chase around The Balsams, with incompetent TV journalists, quirky locals and ICE goons constantly being mistaken for each other and popping out of cupboards.

83 (Barry Freed on Jan 22, 2026 3:22 AM)

My war elephants come pre-drunk as I only allow my mahouts to ride elephants in musth. It's a most terrifying spectacle, or so it appears through my field glasses.

]]> 2026-01-20T06:03:02-07:00 Koreans in US Internment Camps https://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2026_01_18.html#019107 Mossy sends in: Kirstin Downey: Most Prisoners In Hawaiʻi's WWII Internment Camp Were Korean The Honouliuli internment camp in central O'ahu is best known in Hawaiʻi as the place some 400 Japanese Americans were detained during World War II. But new research is bringing to light the fact that Koreans were the largest single population group there. In fact, there were seven times as many Koreans held there as Japanese Americans. Of the 4,000 people held, about 2,700 were Korean, captured elsewhere and brought to Hawaiʻi, and about 400 were Japanese Americans who had been living and working in Hawaiʻi when the war broke out. It's been a big secret: Few people know about it today because very few people knew about it then, either. Amid wartime security, information about who was residing at the internment camp was limited, and American officials enforced confidentiality. They recently figured it out by looking at church records. (Also happy (?) MLK day to all who celebrate (activate?). )... 19107@https://www.unfogged.com/ Mossy sends in: Kirstin Downey: Most Prisoners In Hawaiʻi's WWII Internment Camp Were Korean

The Honouliuli internment camp in central O'ahu is best known in Hawaiʻi as the place some 400 Japanese Americans were detained during World War II.

But new research is bringing to light the fact that Koreans were the largest single population group there.

In fact, there were seven times as many Koreans held there as Japanese Americans. Of the 4,000 people held, about 2,700 were Korean, captured elsewhere and brought to Hawaiʻi, and about 400 were Japanese Americans who had been living and working in Hawaiʻi when the war broke out.

It's been a big secret:

Few people know about it today because very few people knew about it then, either. Amid wartime security, information about who was residing at the internment camp was limited, and American officials enforced confidentiality.

They recently figured it out by looking at church records.

(Also happy (?) MLK day to all who celebrate (activate?). )

Comments (43)

Comments on this Entry:

1 (Doug on Jan 19, 2026 10:04 AM)

Interesting!

And it's not exactly hidden history, it's just how memory of some things gets lost.

2 (Unfoggetarian: “Pause endlessly, then go in” (9) on Jan 19, 2026 10:33 AM)

I'm confused, the headline makes it sound like this was something like Japanese detainment, but it looks like it's POWs?

3 (Unfoggetarian: “Pause endlessly, then go in” (9) on Jan 19, 2026 10:39 AM)

What if anything was distinguishing about the small fraction of Japanese-Americans in Hawaii who were interned? Unlike on the mainland it's a very small fraction of Japanese-Americans, but googling just doesn't seem to say anything about what made those particular people targeted.

4 (jms on Jan 19, 2026 11:42 AM)

2. Yes, the article is confusing! It was always well-known that many supposedly-Japanese POWs were actually Korean conscripts and forced laborers. I think the thing that is surprising to the scholars and others quoted in the article is that the internment camp in Hawaii actually operated primarily as a POW camp.

3. My understanding is that because so many Hawaii residents were of Japanese descent, it was impossible to intern everyone with Japanese ancestry. So they imprisoned the people who seemed the most critical to the continued existence of foreign cultural influence, like community group leaders, Buddhist priests, and the editors of Japanese-language press.

5 (ajay on Jan 19, 2026 12:04 PM)

"Most of the Koreans were in fact doubly prisoners: The Japanese, who had invaded and conquered Korea in the early 1900s, had conscripted many of them against their will. "

This is also true of most of the Japanese in the Japanese armed forces - Japan conscripted its own people as well!

6 (ajay on Jan 19, 2026 12:06 PM)

4.2 is interesting- somehow I had assumed that internment was especially severe in Hawaii, what with it being incredibly strategically important, but in fact the reverse was true?

7 (peep on Jan 19, 2026 12:13 PM)

3: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/japanese-americans-wartime-experience-hawaii
This article doesn't exactly answer your question, but it was clarifying to me. Maybe it does a better job answering 6 -- part of the answer is that all of Hawii was under martial law so there was less need for internment, another part was that maybe Hawaii was less racist, and maybe most importantly of all, the Japanese were such a large percent of the population, interning them all would have been expensive and logistically difficult.

8 (Spike on Jan 19, 2026 1:26 PM)

I suspect it was that the Japanese were needed to work the plantations.

9 (Minivet on Jan 19, 2026 1:36 PM)

Also ethnic Japanese were a large plurality of the Hawaiian population in 1940. 158k Japanese, 112k white, 64k native Hawaiian, 53k Filipino, 29k Chinese.

I can't tell from the description but if most of the Koreans there were captured from the Japanese military (in whatever capacity), they may have been among the many Koreans forced to assimilate and take Japanese names, and the US military might have taken them in under those names.

10 (Unfoggetarian: “Pause endlessly, then go in” (9) on Jan 19, 2026 3:27 PM)

6: My understanding as a total non-expert is there's three main factors here:

1) the number of ethnic Japanese people in Hawaii was so large that internment was impractical and would wreck the economy.

2) A lot of the push for internment on the West Coast was driven by people who wanted to take the farmland owned by Japanese-Americans, and in Hawaii there was very little land held by Japanese people (since big plantation owners held it all)

3) Lt. Gen. Emmons realized it was a terrible idea (see 1) and slow-played internment until he could get the policy changed.

11 (Unfoggetarian: “Pause endlessly, then go in” (9) on Jan 19, 2026 3:28 PM)

Like one big practical factor was that shipping 100k people from Hawaii to the mainland would waste a bunch of ships that were needed more urgently.

12 (Unfoggetarian: “Pause endlessly, then go in” (9) on Jan 19, 2026 3:35 PM)

4: Thanks! That second paragraph clears it up for me.

On the first one, surely everyone already knew it was mostly for POWs, just based on the size of the camp? My read was that the "surprise" is just that the "Japanese" POWs were in fact mostly ethnic Koreans?

13 (Moby Hick on Jan 19, 2026 3:49 PM)

It was a surprise to me, but it does make sense. The Japanese military was famously reluctant to surrender but why would a Korean conscript be eager to die.

14 (mc on Jan 19, 2026 5:11 PM)

It's just come to my notice that there is/was an Azorean community in HI. Whaling?

15 (Moby Hick on Jan 19, 2026 5:13 PM)

Probably not recently.

16 (Mossy Character on Jan 19, 2026 5:19 PM)

Yet even when it came to Hawai'i, Roosevelt felt a need to massage the point. Though the territory had a substantial white population, nearly three-quarters of its inhabitants were Asians or Pacific Islanders. Roosevelt clearly worried that his audience might regard Hawai'i as foreign. So on the morning of his speech, he made another edit. He changed it so that the Japanese squadrons had bombed not the "island of Oahu," but the "American island of Oahu."

Another book I need to finish. Though it seems my reader has lost my bookmark.

17 (Moby Hick on Jan 19, 2026 5:23 PM)

I'm not sure that was because of the racial composition of the Hawaiian populace. Americans just suck at geography. Probably not as bad then as now, but still pretty bad.

18 (lurid keyaki on Jan 19, 2026 9:25 PM)

14: origin story of the ukulele, among other things.

19 (jms on Jan 19, 2026 10:16 PM)

And Leonard's malasadas!

20 (ajay on Jan 20, 2026 12:52 AM)

My read was that the "surprise" is just that the "Japanese" POWs were in fact mostly ethnic Koreans?

The Japanese used a lot of Korean troops as construction and labour battalions - so when you took an island somewhere in the central Pacific it would normally contain a lot of dead Japanese infantry and a few hundred alive Koreans who had been there to dig bunkers and so on. That would suggest that there would be a lot of Korean POWs, out of proportion to their numbers in the Japanese army as a whole, not only because they weren't all quite as dedicated to the point of suicide, but also because they wouldn't really be in a position to fight and get killed (apart from anything else the Japanese thought they weren't very good at combat roles, what with lacking yamato damashii and so on - much as the US army looked on its coloured soldiers). On Makin, for instance, the US took 105 prisoners, 104 of whom were Korean construction troops. The total garrison was 978 combat troops and 276 construction troops.

(Korean troops were also, infamously, preferred as guards for prisoner of war camps and internment camps. There is a reason why Fleming made Goldfinger's henchman a Korean - they had a reputation in the UK in the 1950s as utter bastards for hire, based on stories from WW2 and of course the Korean war.)

Note that this "Most of the Koreans were in fact doubly prisoners: The Japanese, who had invaded and conquered Korea in the early 1900s, had conscripted many of them against their will" is putting quite a positive spin on it. Yes, the Japanese did conscript Koreans into the army - but only from 1944. If you were a Korean in the Japanese army before that, it was because you wanted to be.

21 (ajay on Jan 20, 2026 1:01 AM)

Further to 20.2, for example, Lt Gen Hong Sa-Ik, the Korean in charge of all Japanese POW camps in the Philippines. They hanged him in Manila in 1946.

The Japanese were rather better at promoting their colonial troops than most of the other combatants. The highest-ranking Indian officer, KS Thimayya, was only a brigadier; similarly the highest ranking black officer in the US army, Benjamin Davis, was a brigadier-general. Konstantin Rokossovsky, of course, made it to Marshal, although his teeth did not.

22 (ajay on Jan 20, 2026 1:28 AM)

Though the territory had a substantial white population, nearly three-quarters of its inhabitants were Asians or Pacific Islanders. Roosevelt clearly worried that his audience might regard Hawai'i as foreign. So on the morning of his speech, he made another edit. He changed it so that the Japanese squadrons had bombed not the "island of Oahu," but the "American island of Oahu."

Yeah, I'm with Moby on this one. I do not believe that the average American in 1941 a) knew where Oahu was b) knew the precise demographic details of its population but yet somehow c) did not know that it was part of a US territory.

I think it's much more likely that he thought, correctly, that they knew none of these things - rather like the story that millions of British people panicked in April 1982 because they thought the Falkland Islands were somewhere off the coast of Scotland. (Did this really happen? Or are people simply remembering a joke from "The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole"?)

23 (Barry Freed on Jan 20, 2026 1:34 AM)

Wasn't there that one Korean guy who was captured by the Japanese and conscripted into the army, captured by the Red Army and conscripted therein, them captured by the Wehrmacht and conscripted therein only to be captured by American soldiers in Normandy around D-Day. I think he later emigrated to the US and became a citizen residing in Illinois iirc.

24 (ajay on Jan 20, 2026 2:03 AM)

Yes!

Or, in fact, checking wiki, maybe not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Kyoungjong

The US National Archives contain a photo of an apparently Asian man in Wehrmacht uniform being processed as a POW, captioned as a "young Japanese man" (which supports the story to a point). But there's no contemporary information at all about his name or his service history. The earliest source seems to be an interview by notoriously sloppy pop-historian Stephen Ambrose of this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_B._Brewer who was in Easy Company (AS SEEN ON TV), and who said that four Koreans had been captured in Normandy by his regiment.

The complete absence of evidence is suggestive. If you process someone as a POW, it leaves a paper trail. If you grant someone US citizenship, it leaves a paper trail. If someone lives in Illinois for more than forty years, it leaves a paper trail. None of these things seem to exist.

Various bits of the story could be true.
Were there ex-Soviet soldiers in Wehrmacht uniform in Normandy on D-Day? Yes, beyond doubt.
Did some of them look Asian? Yes, beyond doubt - there were Turkestan Legion troops there, for instance, recruited from Central Asian POWs.
Were some of them Koreans? Entirely likely. The USSR had a population of ethnic Koreans (who were culturally Korean and spoke Korean) which it genocided in 1937 - the survivors ended up in Central Asia and their fighting-age men would certainly have been conscripted.
Were some of them Koreans from Korea? No evidence for it.

I suspect this is partly true, partly an urban legend; my guess is that some Koreans really were captured in Normandy, and the explanation is just some confused Americans discussing this, (understandably) not knowing about Soviet Koreans and trying to work out how the hell it could have happened, and coming up with the three-step story that Brewer later remembered as fact.

George Orwell told a similar but slightly different story in a column in October 1944:
"RECENTLY I was told the following story, and I have every reason to believe that it is true.

"Among the German prisoners captured in France there are a certain number of Russians. Some time back two were captured who did not speak Russian or any other language that was known either to their captors or their fellow prisoners. They could, in fact, only converse with one another. A professor of Slavonic languages, brought down from Oxford, could make nothing of what they were saying. Then it happened that a sergeant who had served on the frontiers of India overheard them talking and recognized their language, which he was able to speak a little. It was Tibetan! After some questioning, he managed to get their story out of them.

"Some years earlier they had strayed over the frontier into the Soviet Union and had been conscripted into a labour battalion, afterwards being sent to western Russia when the war with Germany broke out. They were taken prisoner by the Germans and sent to North Africa; later they were sent to France, then exchanged into a fighting unit when the Second Front opened, and taken prisoner by the British. All this time they had been able to speak to nobody but one another, and had no notion of what was happening or who was fighting whom.

"It would round the story off neatly if they were now conscripted into the British army and sent to fight the Japanese, ending up somewhere in Central Asia, quite close to their native village, but still very much puzzled as to what it is all about."

25 (Barry Freed on Jan 20, 2026 2:10 AM)

Oh too bad, I remember discussing him on the late lamented B&T blog.

The Orwell story is fascinating, I wonder what became of those poor guys.

26 (ajay on Jan 20, 2026 2:32 AM)

Just looking at the map it does not seem easy to "stray over the frontier" from Tibet into the USSR. For a start, there was no frontier between Tibet and the USSR. The two countries were about 150 miles apart at their closest, and that is 150 miles of Himalayas.

27 (ajay on Jan 20, 2026 2:47 AM)

There is no one with the surname "Yang" living in Illinois in 1950, according to the US Census.

28 (mc on Jan 20, 2026 2:52 AM)

Historically Tibetans were nomads and moved all over what's now the western PRC (and vice versa: plenty of Mongols on the Tibetan plateau, frex).
Tibetan languages also extend all the way to Afghanistan. The Balti in Gilgit-Baltistan is Tibetan. And they did regularly cross the Himalayas for trade and pilgrimage.

29 (ajay on Jan 20, 2026 3:01 AM)

Ah, good point. That bit is plausible, then.

30 (ajay on Jan 20, 2026 3:15 AM)

And this article provides a lot more detail, sourced from Brian Fawcett, "Cambodia", which is a book of essays and short stories published in 1989. https://samkriss.substack.com/p/five-prophets

The two Tibetans were peasants from Gyêgumdo in what's now the Chinese province of Qinghai. They'd been making a pilgrimage to Lhasa, where they were planning to join a monastery. However, they got caught in a snowstorm, lost their bearings, and strayed into China. They were captured by bandits along the Lancan River, who headed north to join the Communists in Yan'an. At some point the Tibetans escaped and wandered aimlessly through the parched wildernesses until they were finally picked up by the Soviet authorities in Tashkent, given a rifle, and told to defend the socialist motherland against fascism. Fawcett provides one important addition to Orwell's story: the answer to 'the riddle of their unlikely survival and their profound, elastic passivity in the face of hardship after hardship.' He explains that 'for ten years, these two men had believed that they were dead... They had survived because from the very first days of their ordeal they believed they were dead men caught in an unpredictable bardo, or netherworld.'

Now, Fawcett is a Canadian poet and author, not a historian or a country specialist, and I don't know what the sourcing is - he may well be making stuff up (he's clearly trying to be Borgesian). I should note that the Lancan river is also known as the Mekong, and is about 2,700 km from Tashkent at its closest. In fact, to get from the Lancan river to Tashkent, if you're taking anything like the direct route, you have to travel through Tibet from one end to the other.

31 (Barry Freed on Jan 20, 2026 3:27 AM)

He explains that 'for ten years, these two men had believed that they were dead... They had survived because from the very first days of their ordeal they believed they were dead men caught in an unpredictable bardo, or netherworld.'

This part is very familiar and I know I must have read it somewhere before.

32 (mc on Jan 20, 2026 3:41 AM)

Heh.

33 (Barry Freed on Jan 20, 2026 3:43 AM)

32 I figured it was either you or B&T, maybe both

34 (mc on Jan 20, 2026 3:56 AM)

KSR. But this version sounds more interesting.

35 (mc on Jan 20, 2026 5:35 AM)

Massively topically, All You Need is Kill is super good.

36 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 20, 2026 5:40 AM)

17: One of my memories of 7th grade was that we actually studied Geography. We had to memorize all of the different seas and identify them on maps.

37 (Mossy Character on Jan 20, 2026 6:43 AM)

IIRC one of the points of the Immerwahr book is exactly that the teaching of geography changed: early 20C maps often showed the US in all its seaborne imperial glory, but postwar converged on what he calls the "logo map": just the CONUS (with AK and HI sometimes shown in insets, but never to scale).

38 (Mossy Character on Jan 20, 2026 6:47 AM)

(Immerwahr is the quote in 16. https://search.worldcat.org/title/1149461690 )

39 (Barry Freed on Jan 20, 2026 6:51 AM)

38, 38 was making note of it so I can buy it for my library but I just checked and we have it. I'll be checking it out tomorrow.

40 (Mossy Character on Jan 20, 2026 7:07 AM)

For BG, whose thought I would appreciate:

Selvage and Lee brought in Martin T. Camacho. Martin T. Camacho was a prominent Portuguese American lawyer from Madeira who had served in the National Labor Relation Board before the war and afterwards ran efforts to organize workers in Tokyo to form anti-communist unions during the General Douglas MacArthur-led occupation of Japan. In 1952 he ran Kennedy's outreach to Portuguese voters in the 1952 Senate election, working closely with both Robert and Jack Kennedy to get Massachusetts' large Portuguese community to block vote for the first time. Not only was this critical to Kennedy's victory over Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., but it solidified Portuguese Americans' role as kingmakers in several congressional districts in the state (including those of Democrats Tip O'Neil and Republicans Joseph W. Martin and Hastings Keith).330 With the help of Selvage and Lee funding, Camacho created the Portuguese American Foreign Relations Committee to provide the appearance of a grassroots and organic movement of patriotic Portuguese Americans in support of Portugal's colonial war.
[...]
Camacho shared speeches within the Massachusetts Portuguese American community, which then brought them to the attention of Congressmen O'Neil, Martin, and Keith as representative of a crucial constituency. All three congressmen inserted into the Congressional Record propaganda materials created by Selvage and Lee. Downs also convinced his friend and fellow Berlin Airlift veteran General Frank Howley, recently fired from the Army for forcing his troops to read John Birch Society pamphlets, to accompany him on a trip to Angola. Upon his return Howley published a Downs-inspired article in Reader's Digest, which at the time enjoyed the widest readership of any magazine in America. The Howley piece was full of blatant lies, including the repeated refrain that Holden Roberto was a communist, quoting him saying "our comrade THE DEVIL is standing by with a watchful eye," and "LONG LIVE COMMUNISM."
[...]
The most notorious and effective propaganda item of the campaign was a pamphlet titled "On the Morning of March 15." It typified propaganda emanating from the alliance of Selvage and Lee, the Overseas Companies of Portugal, and the regime. After the armed forces cleared areas formerly held by Angolan rebels, the Portuguese secret police took extensive photos of a particularly gruesome scene in which victims of rebel attack were gruesomely maimed, including images of dead pregnant women and white babies dead in cribs scattered by the roadside. The images were handed over to the Colonial Ministry, who in turn sent them to OCP and from there to Selvage and Lee. The pamphlet linked the collection of images with a series of stories of white plantations, the families who lived there, and how "on the morning of March 15" their lives came to a brutal end. An accompanying pamphlet, "The Communists and Angola," placed the blame squarely on the American Committee on Africa and their support of communism. In August 1961, Selvage and Lee ordered the first 35,000 copies and disseminated them amongst the Portuguese of Boston and to libraries who lacked materials on Angola, now a hot news item.
[...]
Within days of going to print, the Portuguese Embassy in Washington was inundated with requests for copies from the White Citizens' Council, the Young Americans for Freedom, the John Birch Society, the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation run by the Schlafly family, George Benson of Harding College, and several outfits of the Young Republicans. By mid 1962 snippets of OCP pamphlets were appearing in the far-right radio shows run by Dan Smoot and Billy James Hargis. Portuguese Americans spoke about the pamphlets in speeches which later became materials for other news outlets and far right groups. Hargis, the John Birch Society, and the Citizens' Council all sold reprints, with the Citizens' Council copies listed under the heading of "Negro Crime & Crime Rampant in Integrated North." The OCP got Angola into nearly every far-right media space.336 In 1963 arch conservative Barry Goldwater, whose presidential campaign was openly championed by James P. Selvage and a member of the Arizona NAACP, published a series of op-eds in support of Portugal. In his 1963 "Segregation now, segregation forever" speech, George Wallace said the people of Alabama were in common cause with the "Portuguese of Angola."
[...]
The Citizen, the magazine of the White Citizens' Councils of America, called for its readers to "be more effective--send material to your friends!" Appearing right after a reprint of a Martin Camacho speech, the Weekly Crusader implored its readers that in order "to save America," its readers needed to "distribute pro-American literature to people who are not so well informed as you are."
[...]
They were also easily recruited into political propaganda schemes because for all of their talk about the new conservative future of American politics, by 1961 it had been four years since the Little Rock crisis and seven since Brown v. Board of Education. They lacked engaging content that stoked the fear, rage, and distrust that they wanted to foment.

41 (Mossy Character on Jan 20, 2026 7:08 AM)

Dammit wrong thread

42 (Mossy Character on Jan 20, 2026 7:11 AM)

39: No spoilers!

43 (ajay on Jan 20, 2026 8:25 AM)

That's just postwar nationalism, though - think about how geography teaching in the UK started ignoring things like "principal exports and imports of Brazil" and big maps with main sea trade routes on, and turned its attention to a very parochial study of how English towns develop. Food and so on just appears on the shelves, you see.

]]> 2026-01-19T07:57:29-07:00 I'm starting to think he's not playing 12-dimensional chess, after all. https://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2026_01_11.html#019106 This new playbook of giving Trump awards in order to butter him up is just jaw-dropping. Like we're in "giving kids lollipops" territory of outsmarting him.... 19106@https://www.unfogged.com/ This new playbook of giving Trump awards in order to butter him up is just jaw-dropping. Like we're in "giving kids lollipops" territory of outsmarting him.

Comments (159)

Comments on this Entry:

1 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 16, 2026 8:58 AM)

He's basically Smaug.

2 (teofilo on Jan 16, 2026 9:16 AM)

Trump is playing one-dimensional chess.

3 (peep on Jan 16, 2026 9:22 AM)

2: I don't think that should be called chess.

4 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 16, 2026 9:29 AM)

TEGWAR

5 (Cala on Jan 16, 2026 9:34 AM)

He's mentally gone, is the only conclusion I have. No one thinks that being handed the Nobel medal is being awarded the prize. This is the logic of toddlers.

6 (peep on Jan 16, 2026 9:46 AM)

5: I think he's always been this way. From the start he became famous because he named things after himself. If I had his ear I would explain to him that while lots of people get awards, only the most important people of all get to have an award named for them. So he should start giving out the Trump Awards for Journalism, the Trump Awards for Artistic Achievement etc. He could have a Trump Award for Peace and give it to himself. I would also tell him that since no one wants to perform at the Trump Kennedy Center he should start a residency there and put on a performance every couple of weeks. Trump Does Standup! Trump Sings! Trump Dances! I would assure him that he would sell out every time.

7 (Barry Freed on Jan 16, 2026 9:53 AM)

He could have a Trump Award for Peace and give it to himself.

Lmao, this is an excellent idea

8 (chill on Jan 16, 2026 10:18 AM)

Trump has never been one for making fine distinctions about what has value
and what doesn't. Smaug logic, yup.

9 (Moby Hick on Jan 16, 2026 10:22 AM)

It didn't sound like Smaug got up from his bed to shit either.

10 (politicalfootball on Jan 16, 2026 10:30 AM)

It's a race to see if Trump destroys himself before he destroys the country. I am heartened by the public response in Minnesota and elsewhere, and dismayed by Schumer and his ilk.

11 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 16, 2026 10:47 AM)

Second 10.

12 (Megan on Jan 16, 2026 10:59 AM)

I'm still liking my prediction that nothing will be too stupid for Trump's second term.

13 (NickS on Jan 16, 2026 11:00 AM)

6/7 is that a reference to this: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/01/i-was-talking-to-my-doctor-down-at-the-hospital

14 (Barry Freed on Jan 16, 2026 11:11 AM)

13 JFC lmao

15 (heebie on Jan 16, 2026 11:21 AM)

This is such a nightmare. I mean, I suppose an evil genius is worse than an evil toddler, but this still sucks a lot.

16 (Nathan J. Williams on Jan 16, 2026 11:42 AM)

I've lost the original attribution, but this was from 2019 or earlier:

"The former official said he doesn't think Trump is playing 'the sort of three-dimensional chess people ascribe to decisions like this. More often than not he's just eating the pieces.'"

17 (Eggplant on Jan 16, 2026 11:51 AM)

They're evil toddlers who think they're evil geniuses. Which sounds so much cuter than it is.

18 (Eggplant on Jan 16, 2026 11:59 AM)

People tend to underestimate their commitment and ability to pull off petty schemes while wildly overestimating their motives and strategies. Like with Greenland.

19 (fake accent on Jan 16, 2026 1:34 PM)

Could Machado be the first holder of both a Nobel and an Ig Nobel? I guess there's no Ig Nobel prize for peace.

20 (fake accent on Jan 16, 2026 1:35 PM)

But there is a FIFA prize. Go figure.

21 (lurid keyaki on Jan 16, 2026 1:52 PM)

Oh, this would be so richly deserved an Ig Nobel Peace Prize that they might inaugurate one.

22 (unimaginativre on Jan 16, 2026 5:37 PM)

There are Ig Nobel Peace prizes in most years! 2025 winners proved that alcohol consumption sometimes improves ability to speak foreign languages. A few past winners are Presidents or prime ministers, but Trump would be the first US president.

23 (Charlie W on Jan 16, 2026 5:59 PM)

The orange one (with cronies) is sitting on one of the heaviest diplomatic defeats in history, unfolding currently. Strong sense of an event horizon being crossed for every minute that Trump isn't stopped. I do not see how you rebuild any 'transatlantic' alliance after this, unless on a decades-long scale; the level of betrayal and unreliability is too great for that. Non-US countries will find cooperation wherever they can, and there are plenty of openings.

24 (Charlie W on Jan 16, 2026 6:20 PM)

For ex. https://www.ft.com/content/9eeff245-2081-4f97-bc8e-6bbdaf59074e

Plus Mercosur, and an EU-India trade deal that might have a name but I don't know it.

25 (lurid keyaki on Jan 16, 2026 7:25 PM)

I'm going to vote to move this comment here. Am I the last person in the U.S. to have read those 2020 interviews? First, second. For the drug stuff, someone would have to offer a plausible alternative explanation, because it seems to fit the facts perfectly... but I don't know what to make of this guy as an informant otherwise. On the other hand, this is the only kind of inside informant you'll ever have about Trump: someone whose interests aligned enough with his that they ended up spending a lot of time with him and his circle.

Ivanka has very little visible role in this administration, but I wonder if that's aligning with any strategy of hers.

This I believe 100%: "under the surface Trump is much darker than most people realize."

26 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 16, 2026 7:47 PM)

I can't take anymore Trump/ICE/fascism today. Going to log off and read science fiction. We were going to hang out with my little sister and my niece tomorrow, but my sister had a panic attack yesterday and doesn't want to leave her house. My friends could smell the teargas from the other night's disturbance at their house 2 miles away from the incident. If I could run and shout I'd want to be out blockading Washington Ave. tomorrow, but I'd be a serious liability at this point. Everything is cancelled here for the next week, making the few things that are still going on -- Winter Flower Show? Seriously? -- seem completely surreal. I went to the little mini-deli in the convenience store near my house tonight, and the usual crowd of cooks, clerks, kids just out of school and various relatives was replaced by one young guy with light skin and a standard Midwestern accent, presumably a citizen who's not super worried about getting disappeared. One of the shopkeepers was in the backroom, kneeling on a piece of cardboard pointing vaguely towards Mecca. I think most of the family has been here quite awhile, but I haven't seen the big guy who seems to be a more recent immigrant for weeks. Jesus was gone too, even though he's been a fixture there for the last 17 years. I hate these fucking fascists so much. And the mealy-mouthed moderates who whine about "violent" protests are not much better. Assholes.

27 (Jesus on Jan 16, 2026 7:59 PM)

2, 025 years.

28 (Mossy Character on Jan 17, 2026 1:09 AM)

||
Passion has way more words than its writing can carry, but ends up working quite well anyway.
|>

29 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 17, 2026 3:33 AM)

27, naw, the first year I lived here it was just these stoner guys. Only convenience store in the city I knew of where you could regularly trade weed for food.

30 (fake accent on Jan 17, 2026 2:10 PM)

22: Thanks! I guess I should have looked it up. I remembered the Ig Nobels being about various areas of research.

I do think it's funniest to give it to Machado, not Trump.

31 (Moby Hick on Jan 17, 2026 8:47 PM)

Trump's brain is just broken, right? The Army-Navy game? That's not even racist or profitable.

32 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 18, 2026 1:04 AM)

He attends and wants attention monopoly. Also trying to make military officers like him, but I'm thinking nost don't even care.

33 (heebie on Jan 18, 2026 6:21 AM)

I suppose it took longer than most places, but ICE is now visibly in Heebieville. (As opposed to hearing rumors of deportations but not specific sightings.)

34 (Sir Kraab on Jan 18, 2026 2:03 PM)

The guy they grabbed in Kyle this weekend, fracturing his skull in the process, is a friend of a friend.

35 (Charlie W on Jan 18, 2026 11:35 PM)

The Trump letter to the Norwegian PM, copied (by Trump) to multiple embassies.

Beyond doubt unwell, and worse even than a few days ago. This reduces his responsibility, but responsibility doesn't disappear: it passes to other Americans.

36 (ajay on Jan 19, 2026 12:26 AM)

Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, completely fails to meet the standard required (and he's still on the child abuse site) https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/2012964973513769412

Fundamentally unserious individual.

37 (Charlie W on Jan 19, 2026 12:28 AM)

Yep. Period of national reflection ahead. Hopefully not too far ahead.

38 (ajay on Jan 19, 2026 12:39 AM)

"I hope at least the U-boats are being built by union labor! LOL. #unionlabel #standtogether" -- Bernie Sanders, March 1941

39 (ajay on Jan 19, 2026 12:45 AM)

It's kind of funny because for the last 8 years leftists have been using this meme against their true enemies, liberals
"Conservatives: Lets round up Muslims and put them in camps. Liberals: HIRE 👏 MORE 👏 WOMEN 👏 GUARDS 👏."

And now it's more like
"Conservatives: Let's invade and occupy the territory of a peaceful ally. Leftists: LET'S👏 TALK👏 ABOUT👏 MEDICARE👏."

40 (ajay on Jan 19, 2026 1:00 AM)

Worse, actually, it's
"Conservatives: Let's invade and occupy the territory of a peaceful ally. Leftists: AND👏 GIVE👏 THEM 👏 ALL👏 MEDICARE👏."

41 (Barry Freed on Jan 19, 2026 3:52 AM)

This whole thing has me incandescent with rage and Democrats across the board from lefties like Sanders to centrists like Schumer are completely failing to understand the perilous nature of the moment and meet it with anything near the required seriousness. If anything Schumer has me more angry because he's the fucking Senate minority leader but it's a close call.

42 (ajay on Jan 19, 2026 4:02 AM)

I think the common factor is the phenomenon - all too common among Americans, but by no means restricted to them - of not actually believing that the rest of the world exists. I don't think for these people that "Paris" and "Lagos" are in the same mental category as "Chicago" or "Asheville", I think they're in the same mental category as "King's Landing" and "Disneyworld Main Street USA". Hence the absolute fury at things like an American getting put in prison for killing two people in a car crash in Okinawa. That's not supposed to happen! It's a safe space! It's like the Hamburglar actually stealing your car! Real politics for these ageing pricks happens entirely within the USA. Having to comment on foreign affairs is something they do grudgingly, like Tony Blair issuing a statement in support of Deirdre Barlow. (Look it up.)

43 (Mossy Character on Jan 19, 2026 4:05 AM)

Salazar was especially worried about the spread of American values in the Azores, which he believed were uniquely susceptible to American influence given the large Azorean communities in New England and California.

44 (Barry Freed on Jan 19, 2026 4:38 AM)

And NATO countries, especially Germany and the UK, need to threaten to cancel SOFAs if this dangerous nonsense continues.

45 (Barry Freed on Jan 19, 2026 4:40 AM)

And threaten to cancel visa free travel to the UK and Europe as well

46 (ajay on Jan 19, 2026 5:21 AM)

45: I'd be in favour of just cancelling travel from the US to the UK and Europe full stop for ninety days.

47 (Charlie W on Jan 19, 2026 5:23 AM)

Not sure how enthusiastic Americans will be about a lebensraum conquest of Canada, but that is odds on the direction of travel now? Or at least a faction in the administration seems to want to steer the chaos north, not south (Miller, Bongino?) and Trump is perfectly adequate for them as an enabler. Any 25th amendment type intervention has to sweep them all up. Huge rot present.

Let's see if we get through Monday without martial law.

48 (Charlie W on Jan 19, 2026 5:31 AM)

And look, I'm all for EU visa changes but it's small beer. Europe (the 'contact group minus the US' or what have you that supports Ukraine) will be working very unsentimentally now on resilience, deterrence armaments, technological sovereignty, fifth column erasure (one hopes), alternate trade; things that help survival. With missteps, possibly. That same group might also opt to enfold Ukraine as a full ally.

The internals of America are for Americans to fix, because only they can, and I really wouldn't waste any more time, guys.

49 (Eggplant on Jan 19, 2026 5:34 AM)

Americans are also under threat from this regime, ajay.

50 (Charlie W on Jan 19, 2026 5:35 AM)

Bongino? Bovino? I was thinking of the Nazi coat and haircut guy anyway.

51 (Barry Freed on Jan 19, 2026 5:38 AM)

46 even better

52 (Barry Freed on Jan 19, 2026 5:44 AM)

47 Oddly Canada seems to have momentarily slipped the mad rotting king's mind in the latest threats against Greenland, Venezuela, Mexico, Columbia, and Cuba but I'm sure he'll circle back around to it eventually.

53 (Eggplant on Jan 19, 2026 5:45 AM)

49 was regarding the fecklessness of the democratic response, not what Europe should do in response. By all means, use all means.

54 (ajay on Jan 19, 2026 5:55 AM)

Americans are also under threat from this regime, ajay.

(leans towards microphone)

GOOD. I HOPE THAT CONTINUES TO HAPPEN.

Because it is very far from obvious that anything at all would be happening to restrain this lunatic if he confined himself to threatening the lives of foreigners.

55 (heebie on Jan 19, 2026 6:58 AM)

I truly don't know how to get Americans to follow a plotline for more than 2 years.

56 (Charlie W on Jan 19, 2026 7:14 AM)

Miller, btw, is freelancing to an incredible degree at the moment. He's just said that local police in MN are to 'surrender'. This makes him quite exposed, I would say.

57 (Charlie W on Jan 19, 2026 7:18 AM)

Although unconfirmed. Might be bogus.

58 ( politicalfootball on Jan 19, 2026 7:23 AM)

36: I think if you read that again you'll see that Bernie is being sarcastic. Also, that tweet does not represent the entirety of his position on Greenland.

59 (ajay on Jan 19, 2026 7:31 AM)

I think if you read that again you'll see that Bernie is being sarcastic.

No, that is not sarcasm. You do not understand what sarcasm means.

Sarcasm consists of "ironic" statements - statements whose implied meaning is opposite to their apparent one - used in order to convey contempt or dislike. For example, "oh, good, it's raining" - I do not actually like rain.

There are no sarcastic statements in that post.

Also, that tweet does not represent the entirety of his position on Greenland.

"He has also said other things on the automated child abuse website that are less stupid than this" - not a great mitigation.

60 (Charlie W on Jan 19, 2026 7:32 AM)

Confirmed; it's on Rawstory at least. I think Mliler is trying to say that MN authorities are not trying to enforce the law; assume that's false and a pretext. Looks like straight up sedition by Miller.

61 (Spike on Jan 19, 2026 7:34 AM)

"Bernie isn't trolling Republicans in the correct way" is a pretty stupid complaint. The man spent the past year holding massive rallies in red states talking shit about the President. I can't think of a Senator who has done more.

He should def get off of X, though. But that's a wider, systemic problem with Democrats.

62 (Charlie W on Jan 19, 2026 7:40 AM)

"I can't think of a Senator who has done more" "I can't think of a Senator who has done more". This might be the exact location of the problem?

63 (ajay on Jan 19, 2026 7:46 AM)

He should def get off of X, though. But that's a wider, systemic problem with Democrats.

Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat, Spike.

64 (Spike on Jan 19, 2026 7:47 AM)

Sure, whatever.

65 (ajay on Jan 19, 2026 7:49 AM)

It's kind of a really fundamentally important fact about a very prominent US politician, and you don't know it, but I, a foreigner three thousand miles away, do know it.

66 (Spike on Jan 19, 2026 7:52 AM)

Bernie ran for the Democratic nomination, and caucuses with the Democrats. As a foreigner not living under the two-party system, maybe you don't understand that's all that really matters.

67 ( politicalfootball on Jan 19, 2026 7:57 AM)

59: Bernie is not advocating for mitigating a takeover of Greenland with social programs. I can't imagine how the sarcasm can be missed.

"He has also said other things on the automated child abuse website that are less stupid than this"

His publicly stated position on Greenland is relevant to his publicly stated position on Greenland.

68 (ajay on Jan 19, 2026 8:00 AM)

As a foreigner not living under the two-party system, maybe you don't understand that's all that really matters.

You're really bad at this.

69 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 19, 2026 8:39 AM)

I think the Sanders post is clearly intended to be ironic, as in incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result. You see, ordinarily, when the US invades another country, the citizens of the US do not benefit by having the positive aspects of living in the country which has been invaded accrue to them. One definition of sarcasm is a sharp and often satirical or ironic utterance designed to cut or give pain, which is also clearly Sanders' intent in comparing the social safety net available to Greenlanders to the lack of such supports for US citizens. So, while sarcasm is often understood as merely "saying the opposite of what you mean", in fact, using irony to highlight something painful can also be sarcastic.
Definitions sourced from the online Merriam-Webster dictionary.

70 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 19, 2026 8:48 AM)

To elaborate, the intent of Sanders' utterance is clearly not to switch the topic of discussion from foreign policy to domestic issues, rather, he is using the contrast between domestic policies of the nations in question to highlight the absurdity of the foreign policy proposal from the viewpoint of US citizens who, for instance, lack health care but are being asked to finance useless foreign interventions. Any reasonably contextual reading reveals this. Arguing otherwise smacks of bad faith.
A similar example of bad faith readings was seen in this blog not too long ago when someone pretended to understand a criticism of ongoing pogroms by Israeli Jews against Palestinians in the West Bank occupied territory as if it were advocating pogroms in general.

71 (lurid keyaki on Jan 19, 2026 9:29 AM)

Let me interrupt the fun here to keep delivering miserable updates on Iran: if this reporting in the Times is trustworthy, it's really fucking bad and there's no obvious imminent turning point. I don't even know what to say.

72 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 19, 2026 11:11 AM)

If you look quite deep enough, you'll see its all a con
A look at past history tells... all Government is wrong!

73 (peep on Jan 19, 2026 11:24 AM)

72: OMG! You sound like an anarchist!

74 (ajay on Jan 19, 2026 11:59 AM)

71 good grief. You know things are bad when the ayatollahs themselves are saying there are thousands of dead - over ten thousand seems all too plausible. Terrible.

75 ( politicalfootball on Jan 19, 2026 2:33 PM)

Here is how the NYT described Starmer's reaction to Trump's aggression:

Others, like Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, have argued for a diplomatic solution and cautioned against grandstanding. "That's an understandable instinct, but it's not effective," the prime minister told reporters on Monday morning. "It never has been. It may make politicians feel good, but it does nothing for working people whose jobs, livelihoods and security rely on the relationships that we build across the world."

That's a bit out of context, but it seems pretty fair to Starmer. Here's the full text.

Schumer and Starmer aren't in the same position, and as an American, I feel comfortable judging Schumer for his weakness and cowardice.

But I'm always a bit mystified about the UK's reluctance to break with the US -- even in the face of extreme provocation. Leaving aside the prudential merits of Starmer's position, is it really good politics to be asking people to downplay their fear and loathing of Trump?

76 (mc on Jan 19, 2026 5:09 PM)

I can think of at least 64 reasons.

77 (Moby Hick on Jan 19, 2026 5:10 PM)

So, Denmark and other E.U. countries sent troops to Greenland. Do they go to the local military base, since that's where NATO troops are used to going, and sit next to the American troops that are already there?

78 (Charlie W on Jan 19, 2026 11:27 PM)

75: disentangling the US-UK defence industries will be / would be a big job. A UK submarine builder makes whole sections of the most recent (and much wanted) Virginia class SSNs. BAe makes parts of the F35 (wings? sections of fuselage?). This goes EU-wide as well. A % of F35s are assembled in Italy. It goes the other way as well, obvs. This is probably what Starmer was getting at. But can the orange one get his head around this?

77: I think they're mostly in Kangerlussuaq, which is a former USAF base, say 300 km from Nuuk. I don't know how they get around; C130s possibly. There's not many places for them to go. A serious war - with bombing and such - risks straight up depopulating the place, to my mind. Conversely, you could do things in the north while not particularly caring that there's an entire army in the south.

79 (Charlie W on Jan 19, 2026 11:30 PM)

Where US and European forces are next to each other right now afaik is Iceland: the Swedes flew fighters into Reykjavik in support.

80 (Barry Freed on Jan 19, 2026 11:50 PM)

This is well into 25th Amendment territory https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mctinsakhk26

81 (mc on Jan 20, 2026 12:10 AM)

The existing Americans are at Pituffik, another 900km north of Nuuk.

82 (ajay on Jan 20, 2026 12:34 AM)

But I'm always a bit mystified about the UK's reluctance to break with the US -- even in the face of extreme provocation.

I suspect a lot of it may be that Starmer is basing his strategy on the (correct) belief that the US talks an awful lot of shit. Much of it is provocative shit, sure, but in terms of actions the US has not so far imposed new trade tariffs on any European country, nor on the UK, nor has it actually seized Greenland, nor even flown more troops into Greenland. The US has said it will do all these things, but the US talks an awful lot of shit.
Defence contracts of the type listed in 78 are real, and abrogating them would have real effects on people who matter, ie people in the UK. Saying "I want the Nobel prize or I'm going to bomb Oslo" is just the US talking shit yet again. Responding to the latter with the former would be a category error; better to just ignore it and ride it out.

I am not entirely sure whether I believe this strategy to be correct, but it is at least a consistent position.

83 (fake accent on Jan 20, 2026 12:40 AM)

What reason is there to believe, or to have ever believed that the 25th amendment provisions for removal are more likely to be used against Trump than impeachment followed by removal? I don't think either are impossible but I also don't think either is likely under Republican majorities.

Impeachment has the advantage of being about what the President has done and it's carried out by people who have some electoral accountability at the end of a trial where evidence is presented. The 25th amendment requires judgments about the president's mental state by people who probably wouldn't hold their jobs if they judged the president to be incapable, or it requires Congress to set up a body that could make such a judgment, and the president can dispute that judgment, and it would take 2/3 of Congress to overrule the disputation.

Personally, I have a hard time seeing the 25th amendment ever used to remove a president who is conscious.

84 (Barry Freed on Jan 20, 2026 1:28 AM)

82 yes, how to carefully calibrate the response is as important as it is difficult when dealing with our mad rotting king.

85 (ajay on Jan 20, 2026 1:38 AM)

Quite. I mean, Trump will hopefully be dead by the end of the year. He may be succeeded in due course by someone better. But if you bin a defence contract now, well, defence contracts take years to negotiate. That's long-lasting harm. I think the Arab saying is "the dogs bark and the caravan passes by".

86 (nattarGcM ttaM on Jan 20, 2026 2:27 AM)

I can see that, on the other hand, Trump doesn't generally seem to particular respond well to submission which is what Starmer's strategy often amounts to, and there are costs in terms of relationships with other partners. It's a line to be trod, and it seems to me that he's not quite getting it right, on the other hand, as you say, he does have to take into account that a lot of these statements are just bluster.

87 (Alex on Jan 20, 2026 3:12 AM)

Also a lot of the criticism seems to be pretty much demands for more verbal bluster and empty threats on our part if it isn't "why this latest outrage means you should support my policies".

The actor that's actually in a position to do something is the EU, which has already nixed the trade agreement, could do a retaliatory tariff, and could also dump its Treasuries pile. But unfortunately we've fucked ourselves on that one, and getting out ahead of the EU would be deeply stupid. We can align with them but that means waiting while the wheels of Brussels grind slowly, tho' they grind exceeding small....

If you want to e.g. replace the rocket in Trident with something else that's a decade project.

88 (ajay on Jan 20, 2026 3:54 AM)

on the other hand, Trump doesn't generally seem to particular respond well to submission which is what Starmer's strategy often amounts to

Ah, but if all that's happening is verbal submission, then it doesn't matter. There's no actual cost to saying "well the president makes some good points and of course we are all concerned about the defence of Europe". No money's lost, no one loses their jobs. And if it leads to the US continuing to talk shit, then there's no cost to that either. Saying on the other hand "the US is led by a decaying rapist and if they try to invade Greenland the Royal Marines will stack their severed heads in pyramids the height of a horse's saddle" could lead to the US not only talking shit but doing something actually harmful.

This, at any rate, is I think Starmer's position.

If you want to e.g. replace the rocket in Trident with something else that's a decade project.

If you want to replace it with another rocket, yes. Giant chocolate hazelnut roulade, much easier. You're talking a month tops.

89 (Alex on Jan 20, 2026 3:57 AM)

Your Party policy meeting is in the other thread.

90 (ajay on Jan 20, 2026 4:01 AM)

It is notable that the US seems actually to have backed off from the Greenland invasion idea, and there are a lot of reports floating around that even JSOC is refusing to start the planning cycle on an invasion. The current US negotiating position of "we will tariff you if you don't support our annexation" is not the position of a country which is actually able and willing to start an invasion. It is the position of a country that wants to start an invasion but has just realised it is unable to do so.

91 (Alex on Jan 20, 2026 4:05 AM)

What I'm not clear about is to what extent there was genuine concern about the defence of Greenland and to what extent this is either a front for some demented scheme or a strategy to sidetrack Trump into talking about something that might be soluble.

92 (Charlie W on Jan 20, 2026 4:09 AM)

The impression in me is building that the Trump cabinet are actually intimidated by a man with dementia, and their plan (most days) is to get by with a lot of shoe looking. They may be hoping that the EU calms down as well.

I'll worry more when Vance starts rolling out special rationalisations for a Greenland takeover, in his manner.

93 (Charlie W on Jan 20, 2026 4:11 AM)

Vance, I guess, has seen the polling on Greenland.

94 (Barry Freed on Jan 20, 2026 4:11 AM)

It's good to know there are some red lines that even JSOC won't cross because the recent months have been seriously bad and downright criminal.

95 (nattarGcM ttaM on Jan 20, 2026 5:04 AM)

re: 87 and 88

Yeah, I can see all that, and it's fairly persuasive. It's also probably easier for the UK to play the arse-kissing role alongside a different role for the EU (as per 87).

96 (ajay on Jan 20, 2026 5:05 AM)

I think their concern is probably more practical than moral. Fighting in Greenland weather means your air support becomes very much a sometimes thing, as do your satellite overheads. Now, we have trained for this for decades by just having generally crap air support and overheads all the time, but the US hasn't.

And also I suspect that being "part of NATO forces" is a significant part of their identity - more perhaps than non-military people might think. If you're a JSOC colonel now you were a JSOC captain or major in 2010 and you were running a lot of very kinetic combined operations with other nations' SF, and that was the high point of your career.

97 (ajay on Jan 20, 2026 5:19 AM)

"What I'm not clear about is to what extent there was genuine concern about the defence of Greenland"

Concern among whom, and defence from whom?

98 (Unfoggetarian: “Pause endlessly, then go in” (9) on Jan 20, 2026 5:20 AM)

Greenland, unlike say civil war against Minnesota, really is literally just a Trump brainworm. Zero chance Vance would have any interest in it.

99 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 20, 2026 5:27 AM)

43: Wait, where is that from? Because some of the Trumpiest-leaning people in Mass I know are members of the Azorean Portuguese community.

100 (mc on Jan 20, 2026 5:53 AM)

https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/4057/

101 (heebie on Jan 20, 2026 6:19 AM)

A history prof friend of mine told me the following: Texas is trying to rewrite history curriculum. They're also trying to bypass all the normal transparency and public comment periods, etc, and ram stuff through.

This is the most bewildering part: their plan is to teach history strictly chronologically. In other words, you'd start in 3rd grade with the Peloponnesian War, and end in 12th grade with Joe Biden and Trump.

It sounds too dumb to be true, but if we've learned anything over the past decade...

102 (Alex on Jan 20, 2026 6:22 AM)

87: I was thinking more that it would be a bad idea to go LEEEROY!!! without the EU countries coming along too.

97: concern among noncrazed Americans, and probably Russia or China. What I want to know is whether anyone has such concerns or whether it's entirely something someone came up with in an effort to sidetrack Trump.

103 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 6:25 AM)

No one had concerns but it's not something someone did to distract Trump. He genuinely wants Greenland and a Peace Prize.

104 (Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) on Jan 20, 2026 6:30 AM)

101.2: I actually learned history this way! I kinda liked it, but I don't think it would work for everyone. Also we only did it for American History, and for K-8, by high school I took the normal AP classes.

105 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 6:34 AM)

I learned history mostly by independent reading. High school history was not useful. In college, I didn't take it.

106 (Mossy Character on Jan 20, 2026 6:37 AM)

Belatedly, 1 is a fucking slur.

107 (ajay on Jan 20, 2026 6:49 AM)

102.2: "concerns" is a bit strong, but Greenland has been mildly on the radar of serious people in the US and elsewhere for decades. It's one end of the famous G-I-UK line, and it's also a good place to put missile warning radars - hence all the Cold War activity there by the US and Denmark. That died away a bit in the 90s but recently there has been a lot of talk about the importance of the "High North" - ie Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard and the Canadian Arctic - to NATO and the West generally. Mineral reserves, shipping routes opening up and so on. See here for more https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/regions-and-country-groups/arctic-and-high-north
The main threat is probably Russia, for obvious reasons, but China has an interest in the Arctic because it's a short shipping route to the Atlantic nations.

But all that is very different from what the US is now trying to claim, which is "there is an imminent threat to Greenland that can only be resolved by the US annexing it".

108 (ajay on Jan 20, 2026 6:52 AM)

This doesn't sound insanely stupid, tbh - you've got to teach it in some order, after all. The hilarious thing would be to teach it chronologically *at an even rate* - if you started with the Peloponnesian War that makes roughly 350 years per grade. I think that means you'd only actually get one year of US history in which you would have to cover everything from Plymouth Rock to the war with Venezuela.

109 (Barry Freed on Jan 20, 2026 6:53 AM)

Also this is an interesting thread https://bsky.app/profile/d-cym.bsky.social/post/3mcufah7p6c2r

110 (heebie on Jan 20, 2026 6:56 AM)

I think history should be taught 1 day per day.

111 (heebie on Jan 20, 2026 6:57 AM)

Each cohort gets a 12 year window of history that they know super well. In 2500 years, we'll have true expertise.

112 (ajay on Jan 20, 2026 6:59 AM)

Or start even further back, at the start of recorded history. Every child spends the first three years of school trudging through Egyptian kingdoms and Chinese dynasties. US history collapsed into a four-month block.

113 (Barry Freed on Jan 20, 2026 7:02 AM)

96.1 & 2 are very good points

114 (Barry Freed on Jan 20, 2026 7:07 AM)

Everyone right now should review the history of the Peloponnesian War with special attention to the Melian Dialogue and what happened to Athens in the end.

115 (Mossy Character on Jan 20, 2026 7:08 AM)

For BG, whose thought I would appreciate:

Selvage and Lee brought in Martin T. Camacho. Martin T. Camacho was a prominent Portuguese American lawyer from Madeira who had served in the National Labor Relation Board before the war and afterwards ran efforts to organize workers in Tokyo to form anti-communist unions during the General Douglas MacArthur-led occupation of Japan. In 1952 he ran Kennedy's outreach to Portuguese voters in the 1952 Senate election, working closely with both Robert and Jack Kennedy to get Massachusetts' large Portuguese community to block vote for the first time. Not only was this critical to Kennedy's victory over Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., but it solidified Portuguese Americans' role as kingmakers in several congressional districts in the state (including those of Democrats Tip O'Neil and Republicans Joseph W. Martin and Hastings Keith).330 With the help of Selvage and Lee funding, Camacho created the Portuguese American Foreign Relations Committee to provide the appearance of a grassroots and organic movement of patriotic Portuguese Americans in support of Portugal's colonial war.
[...]
Camacho shared speeches within the Massachusetts Portuguese American community, which then brought them to the attention of Congressmen O'Neil, Martin, and Keith as representative of a crucial constituency. All three congressmen inserted into the Congressional Record propaganda materials created by Selvage and Lee. Downs also convinced his friend and fellow Berlin Airlift veteran General Frank Howley, recently fired from the Army for forcing his troops to read John Birch Society pamphlets, to accompany him on a trip to Angola. Upon his return Howley published a Downs-inspired article in Reader's Digest, which at the time enjoyed the widest readership of any magazine in America. The Howley piece was full of blatant lies, including the repeated refrain that Holden Roberto was a communist, quoting him saying "our comrade THE DEVIL is standing by with a watchful eye," and "LONG LIVE COMMUNISM."
[...]
The most notorious and effective propaganda item of the campaign was a pamphlet titled "On the Morning of March 15." It typified propaganda emanating from the alliance of Selvage and Lee, the Overseas Companies of Portugal, and the regime. After the armed forces cleared areas formerly held by Angolan rebels, the Portuguese secret police took extensive photos of a particularly gruesome scene in which victims of rebel attack were gruesomely maimed, including images of dead pregnant women and white babies dead in cribs scattered by the roadside. The images were handed over to the Colonial Ministry, who in turn sent them to OCP and from there to Selvage and Lee. The pamphlet linked the collection of images with a series of stories of white plantations, the families who lived there, and how "on the morning of March 15" their lives came to a brutal end. An accompanying pamphlet, "The Communists and Angola," placed the blame squarely on the American Committee on Africa and their support of communism. In August 1961, Selvage and Lee ordered the first 35,000 copies and disseminated them amongst the Portuguese of Boston and to libraries who lacked materials on Angola, now a hot news item.
[...]
Within days of going to print, the Portuguese Embassy in Washington was inundated with requests for copies from the White Citizens' Council, the Young Americans for Freedom, the John Birch Society, the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation run by the Schlafly family, George Benson of Harding College, and several outfits of the Young Republicans. By mid 1962 snippets of OCP pamphlets were appearing in the far-right radio shows run by Dan Smoot and Billy James Hargis. Portuguese Americans spoke about the pamphlets in speeches which later became materials for other news outlets and far right groups. Hargis, the John Birch Society, and the Citizens' Council all sold reprints, with the Citizens' Council copies listed under the heading of "Negro Crime & Crime Rampant in Integrated North." The OCP got Angola into nearly every far-right media space.336 In 1963 arch conservative Barry Goldwater, whose presidential campaign was openly championed by James P. Selvage and a member of the Arizona NAACP, published a series of op-eds in support of Portugal. In his 1963 "Segregation now, segregation forever" speech, George Wallace said the people of Alabama were in common cause with the "Portuguese of Angola."
[...]
The Citizen, the magazine of the White Citizens' Councils of America, called for its readers to "be more effective--send material to your friends!" Appearing right after a reprint of a Martin Camacho speech, the Weekly Crusader implored its readers that in order "to save America," its readers needed to "distribute pro-American literature to people who are not so well informed as you are."
[...]
They were also easily recruited into political propaganda schemes because for all of their talk about the new conservative future of American politics, by 1961 it had been four years since the Little Rock crisis and seven since Brown v. Board of Education. They lacked engaging content that stoked the fear, rage, and distrust that they wanted to foment.

116 (Alex on Jan 20, 2026 7:59 AM)

Surprise move: Canada invades Greenland to forestall Trump. Institutes a process of ruthless Canadization.

117 (fake accent on Jan 20, 2026 7:59 AM)

Vance has been rationalizing Trump on Greenland, not sure why some comments above suggest he hasn't.

He might be less visible now because Trump seems to enjoy freezing him out, but this was about ten days ago.

US Vice-President JD Vance says Greenland is "critical" for the defence of the US and the world against possible Russian or Chinese missile attacks - and that Europe and Denmark have "not done a good job" in securing the area.

Vance told Fox News that they had not only under-invested in Greenland's defences, but also failed to engage with President Donald Trump's argument over the issue.

118 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 8:01 AM)

Vance is worse than Trump in every way except that even shitheads are less willing to vote for him than they are to vote for Trump.

119 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 20, 2026 8:08 AM)

115: I didn't know that history, but it makes sense. They were Democrats my entire lifetime and never fit in with Yankee Republicans/ old money of which Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. was one. Lodge Sr. was a big supporter of African-American voting rights but was pretty anti-immigrant. So, this would be the flip side of that, I guess.

120 (Alex on Jan 20, 2026 8:39 AM)

Here's the Trump diplomacy content you've been waiting for:

https://x.com/suzania/status/2013653278567924194

I understand the urge to larp 19th century great power politics but there is a WAY to do that and that is to cook up a homebrew version of Diplomacy set around the time of the Crimean war and play it over the course of three days in an old country house whilst in period costume.

121 (politicalfootball on Jan 20, 2026 9:10 AM)

The frequent convergence of the Leftist and fascist critique of liberals is always striking. Here's Bessent on the EU response to threats against Greenland:

"I imagine they will form the dreaded European working group," Mr. Bessent said, calling it their "most forceful weapon."

I wish I could be confident that this is wrong. Polymarket currently puts the odds of Trump's acquisition of Greenland in 2026 at 20%. That seems about right to me.

122 (Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) on Jan 20, 2026 9:30 AM)

108: IIRC our yearly divisions were something roughly like: pre-Columbus, from Columbus to right before the revolution, revolutionary war, post-revolution to pre-civil war, Civil War, WWI and surrounding, WW2, post-WW2. I can't quite remember if there was like a reconstruction and late 19th century one, I kinda think not because I don't think I knew much about that period.

123 (Barry Freed on Jan 20, 2026 10:16 AM)

Interesting https://bsky.app/profile/paxlusitanica.bsky.social/post/3mcuhqyfzxc2k

124 (ajay on Jan 20, 2026 10:31 AM)

A lot of US formations have a foreign deputy commander, and vice versa. Routine officer exchange programmes. 1st Armored has a British deputy commander, 3 Div has an American deputy commander.

125 (ajay on Jan 20, 2026 10:35 AM)

I think the way it works if the unit or formation is going on ops and the other country isn't involved is that they get politely left behind (IIRC this happened in the Falklands). Obviously we have never had the situation where the unit is going on ops *against* the other country.

126 (apostropher on Jan 20, 2026 10:55 AM)

even shitheads are less willing to vote for him than they are to vote for Trump

Maybe, but I wouldn't bet the mortgage on that. A lot of Trump's faithful are entertained by him but they aren't really voting *for* him or a coherent agenda, they're voting to smite their enemies and Trump is the biggest weapon at hand. If Vance looks most able to crank up the hate speech, they'll march to the polls for him too, just not with the flags and hats.

127 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 11:00 AM)

I'm not an expert on shitheads, but I think plenty are voting for Trump as a person for whatever it is they see in him and that much of that won't transfer to a successor.

128 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 11:01 AM)

Vance hasn't raped anyone, for example.

129 (fake accent on Jan 20, 2026 11:09 AM)

I think Vance could win re-election if he ends up in that position but I'd expect him to dial up domestic suppression maybe even more than Trump has. Or try to, at least.

But I also wouldn't be surprised to see Vance primaried.

130 (lurid keyaki on Jan 20, 2026 11:19 AM)

Yeah, I think 127 is true (it's been true of all popular presidents in recent memory whose VPs got one term at best), and it's a feature of U.S. politics across party lines. Vance does seem to have that mysterious ick factor that dooms people, but even so, his success might depend on contingency.

||
Oh, so you're sick of reading about how fucked up things are in Israel? Do you want to try Russia? There's more where that came from! (Obviously, coming from the land of school shootings, I know that these things are isolated until they're not, and it's worth reflecting further on those fascinating relationships between state and private violence...)
|>

131 (heebie on Jan 20, 2026 11:27 AM)

Vance hasn't raped anyone, for example.

He's more of an upholstery guy.

132 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 11:29 AM)

Timofey?

133 (Jacob Grimm? on Jan 20, 2026 1:16 PM)

Ja?

134 (Spike on Jan 20, 2026 1:21 PM)

When Republicans figure out how much the rest of us hate Vance, they will line up to support him.

135 (Spike on Jan 20, 2026 1:24 PM)

Plus, he'll have ditched his wife and married Erika Kirk by then. People will love the star power.

136 (fake accent on Jan 20, 2026 2:37 PM)

I'm kind of curious if Kirk wants to give up the power and influence she has now. Historically, being a widow or having a husband who is mostly in the background (like Schafly's) have been two of the few avenues to influence for women in conservative movements. I don't see Vance supporting her.

137 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 2:59 PM)

So, apparently the Second Lady is pregnant again.

138 (lurid keyaki on Jan 20, 2026 3:48 PM)

Cool, I'll send a copy of the standard apology to gestating embryos for everything they're about to face.

This was not a great day to pay attention to the news, not because tremendously momentous or terrible things are happening, but because it's an unusually focused onslaught of insanity, chatter, and chattering insanity. So now that I've marinated in florid psychosis: who do we think is the second-highest-placed Russian asset in the U.S. government currently?

139 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 4:29 PM)

138.1: Are you poking holes in diaphrams?

140 (fake accent on Jan 20, 2026 4:36 PM)

138.2: I wonder if the apparent freeze-out of Gabbard suggests that she's a not-Russian asset.

141 (Moby Hick on Jan 20, 2026 4:45 PM)

It could just be that she's a shitty asset to anyone.

142 (Spike on Jan 20, 2026 5:48 PM)

If they don't have Pete Hegseth over a barrel they aren't trying.

143 (ajay on Jan 21, 2026 12:25 AM)

They probably don't think he drinks enough to be a compromise risk.

144 (ajay on Jan 21, 2026 12:25 AM)

So, apparently the Second Lady is pregnant again.

Moby, you dog.

145 (lurid keyaki on Jan 21, 2026 6:58 AM)

AP website juxtaposes headlines (for videos):

- JD Vance and his wife Usha Vance say they are expecting their fourth child
- Researchers find Antarctic penguin breeding is heating up sooner, and that's a problem

146 (peep on Jan 21, 2026 7:31 AM)

138.1: Have you seen Sorry Baby?

147 (lurid keyaki on Jan 21, 2026 7:54 AM)

I have not. Er, sorry?

More penguin content:

chatted with a guy from the Falklands, which you don't get to do very often, because there are only like 3k of them. He told us generations of the same family of humans and the same family of penguins will be neighbors, for generations. He said that Penguins are "bad guys." He doesn't like them.

148 (Barry Freed on Jan 21, 2026 8:54 AM)

Is there even a single Democratic politician who is treating recent events including Trump's insane ramblings in Davos with the seriousness it warrants because I'm not seeing it. This is a five alarm fire for the transatlantic alliance and they're just talking about healthcare. If they were talking about ICE and Minnesota with the seriousness that deserves maybe I'd understand* but I'm not seeing enough of that either.

*Maybe but not really. You can talk about more than one major crisis.

Also Iceland!? Ffs

149 (Barry Freed on Jan 21, 2026 8:55 AM)

Europe is certainly noticing this btw

150 (fake accent on Jan 21, 2026 9:23 AM)

They have kitchen tables in Griceland.

151 (Charlie W on Jan 21, 2026 9:27 AM)

After the orange one's scenes in Davos, all I can say is that things aren't worse. But they're no better. 360 degree hostility from that man.

152 (Charlie W on Jan 21, 2026 9:29 AM)

Possibly, he's trying to calibrate his messaging so as to seem less aggressive to domestic audiences; i.e. yesterday's presser.

153 (politicalfootball on Jan 21, 2026 12:10 PM)

148: I don't follow Democrats that closely, but I've seen Chris Murphy and Gavin Newsome react with what struck me as appropriate shock and horror. I think Trump's depravity pretty much speaks for itself. I'm kinda glad that I have no idea what Schumer is saying. I don't see any particular need for him to try to inject himself into this at this point.

Mark Carney did a nice job summing it all up, though.

154 (Barry Freed on Jan 21, 2026 12:30 PM)

https://bsky.app/profile/jamesrball.com/post/3mcx3fapi2s2f

155 (politicalfootball on Jan 21, 2026 12:37 PM)

Yeah - that's pretty lame. Trump would call it low-energy. Newsom has done better elsewhere on Greenland and Europe (and Congress and Trump).

156 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 21, 2026 12:49 PM)

153: I trust Megan's judgement when it comes to Newsome.

157 (Megan on Jan 21, 2026 1:13 PM)

I suppose he might reveal an underlying set of values if he were already elected and every one of his actions weren't run through the filter of 'does this advance my run for president'. Maybe he's a secret LBJ. But at least on water policy, he has acted like a rich person siding with rich people. He's been the worst governor to work for since I started working in state government. There doesn't appear to be any policy consideration at all; decisions all seem to be about what will get him elected. He has certainly shafted environmentalists on water.

158 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 21, 2026 1:26 PM)

156: I saw him interviewed by Heather Cox Richardson and the fact that it was all about him was completely obvious. I don't understandvhis appeal.

159 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 21, 2026 1:26 PM)

158 to 157

]]> 2026-01-16T08:23:37-07:00 Careers https://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2026_01_11.html#019105 Now that we are an aging staid blog instead of a scrappy youthful thing: if you had a magic wand, what career would you put yourself in the middle of? Are you content with how things evolved, or would you steer your younger self elsewhere? I'm chronically a little bored with my job, but I still love teaching a lot. I'm not particularly pulled in any other direction, but if it were possible to try things out and dabble, maybe there'd be something riveting out there for me. But mostly, I'm somewhere between content and resigned.... 19105@https://www.unfogged.com/ Now that we are an aging staid blog instead of a scrappy youthful thing: if you had a magic wand, what career would you put yourself in the middle of? Are you content with how things evolved, or would you steer your younger self elsewhere?

I'm chronically a little bored with my job, but I still love teaching a lot. I'm not particularly pulled in any other direction, but if it were possible to try things out and dabble, maybe there'd be something riveting out there for me. But mostly, I'm somewhere between content and resigned.

Comments (146)

Comments on this Entry:

1 (Moby Hick on Jan 15, 2026 7:09 AM)

Working is much better now that I do it at home and have enough experience that people try to be nice to me.

2 (Cyrus on Jan 15, 2026 7:17 AM)

I'd like to be an actual writer rather than a technical writer, I could say I'm only technically a writer, but only if it had the dependable salary and hours of a technical writer, as opposed to what actual writers have to go through to scrape work together. I didn't have that kind of hustle when I was 23 and definitely don't now.

I'd say my current job is just perfect as-is but with a little more money and time off. I feel like I shouldn't complain, we're middle-class in a high COLA area, but it would always be nice to have more money and Cassandane gets a ton more paid leave than I do. We can never take vacations as long as she'd like to and/or I bring my computer with me for them.

I'd say my current job is perfect as-is when I'm doing the actual writing, but that's far too rare, compared to cleaning up the hackish messes of formatting people send me while barely touching the content and asking/begging/demanding that subject matter experts actually get back to me with edits and responses that should be really simple, and when they do, noting those responses in five different places.

I dunno. Early 2020 would have been a perfect time for me to look for a new job if not for COVID. I feel like since then there hasn't really been a good time to look due to stuff in the family and at my current job, and definitely won't be for the foreseeable future now.

3 (heebie on Jan 15, 2026 7:57 AM)

I feel right now like I've got a princess composition where there's essentially a razor thin line between feeling either bored or stressed, and a razor thin line between feeling restless or overscheduled.

In other words, I'm impossible to please, and right now I'm momentarily on the bored/restless end of the seesaw. But I spend much of the semester on the stressed/overscheduled side, so I'm loathe to pick up any new responsibility.

4 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 15, 2026 8:01 AM)

If I were young with more resource and had a stable family but with the insights I have, I would have tried to go into public policy or public administration - except maybe not. A lot of the cool jobs that interest me are getting slashed right now.

Like I would love to work in state government if it were like Provincial Government in Canada, but with the exception of a few independent commissions, the work environments are mostly awful.

Currently trying to find a new job, because my new department sucks so bad, and they are restructuring my role to have less responsibility. I'm most interested in contracting with health insurance payers, but there aren't that many people who do it. I've really thought about hiring some kind of person to help me figure out a transition. My organization seems to be on the wrong track overall despite being generally well regarded by the public. There's been an exodus of doctors, for example. I'm really glad I didn't become a primary care doctor.

I'm in a situation where the work no longer feels mission driven AND they pay below market which is the worst of both worlds.

5 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 15, 2026 8:01 AM)

I really dread going to work every day.

6 (Moby Hick on Jan 15, 2026 8:03 AM)

Yeah, that sounds bad.

7 (heebie on Jan 15, 2026 8:08 AM)

4 is much worse than 3.

8 (nope on Jan 15, 2026 8:18 AM)

@4 But at least they aren't moving your office to Assembly Row in 2028, right?

9 (LizardBreath on Jan 15, 2026 8:19 AM)

I don't love lawyering -- I stumbled into law school as my clearest route to employability as an undirected 25-year-old. I do like working in government, though, both in terms of what I think is good and important, and because I like the people and the vibe better than I like most private-sector organizations. (Governmental departments vary a lot, there are some horrifying snake pits out there, but on average the ones I've seen are more likely to be to my taste.)

What exactly should I be doing? Something in infrastructure, maybe? NYC Department of Transportation, MTA, that sort of thing -- the kind of job where I'd have wanted Civ E undergrad and a masters of public administration.

10 (delagar on Jan 15, 2026 8:24 AM)

When I was a kid I wanted to work in a fire lookout tower, and sometimes I still wistfully wish I'd taken that path.

Alternatively, I'd like to be a cook on a cargo ship or some billionaire's yacht.

But now that I'm retired, I really like being retired. No job at all, it's the best!

11 (heebie on Jan 15, 2026 8:27 AM)

I think I could be good at that.

12 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 15, 2026 8:48 AM)

I think I might have liked being an economist. My friend at the Fed likes his job better than most people I know.

Retired: I occasionally fantasize that I would enjoy being a rich housewife who served on non-profit boards. However, I need paid work, and I feel a certain shame at wanting to be the spouse of a country club Republican with no independent career.

9: comments about state government are restricted to the Commonweakth of MA.

8: My group got centralized to that location in 2024 along with some folks from other hospitals, and the corporate culture is awful. I can go in once a month, but I'm basically remote. I like being able to work at home, but I hate being at home almost all the time. I feel like the corporate communication is all propaganda in a way it didn't used to be. At a social gathering a doctor said that to me, and (showing my age) I said "I know it's like Pravda."

A couple of doctors I 've spoken with have said that the approach corporate is taking is eerily similar to Elon Musk's approach to the Federal government.

13 (Southern New England Resident on Jan 15, 2026 8:58 AM)

8: My "favorite "phrase they use is "we're building the plan while we fly it. That sounds like a terrifying concept even if you like analogies.

14 (Minivet on Jan 15, 2026 9:09 AM)

I'm doing pretty well for myself (although I'm never sure just how secure I am), don't think I could have done much better career-wise (personally is a different matter), but I am thinking of branching-off directions right now.

One is that I'm taking accounting courses to solidify my increasingly financial roles, which could land me in a more pure finance position in the future.

Another completely different thing is that after evaluating ideas for small-scale housin development, and losing money on one idea, I'm thinking if I really want to do that the best way might be to actually get a job with a developer, or even a GC, and get knowledge and contacts on the job before doing it myself. But that would be a big zag, almost certainly a big pay cut unless I can get in from a financial direction, and not necessarily the kind of business that would have QOL for me.

15 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 15, 2026 9:13 AM)

14: Where are you taking the accounting courses? We have tuition reimbursement, but it isn't really enough to cover a whole degree, and I don't want to go aimlessly into a program.

16 (chill on Jan 15, 2026 9:34 AM)

Unlike Heebie, I'm not an enthusiastic teacher. I've spent a lot of summers and winter breaks thinking "this job is pretty great when you remove the students from the equation." But despite that my job is a pretty good fit, lots of freedom, decent middle class living in a low COL place. 26 years in, the demands on me as a professor are pretty low, though I relate to Heebie's thin line between boredom and overscheduling.

Pretty uniformly the most pleasant jobs I've had have been the furthest from intellectual/professional jobs. Let me cook pizzas to feed hungry undergraduates, let me wake at 4 to go out and harvest your corn. I've never worked in a factory but yeah, put me in a factory. Manual labor and restaurant jobs won't support a family, but if they did I have little doubt I'd have been happier that way, at least before the great sorting when you mixed with bright, non-fascist people in all kinds of jobs.

17 (chill on Jan 15, 2026 9:35 AM)

What I'm talented at and what I enjoy turn out to be very different things.

18 (Minivet on Jan 15, 2026 9:40 AM)

15: The extension program of the flagship state university. I don't know if you have an equivalent. I'm taking one class a quarter; each class is about fourteen hundred including textbook, so tuition reimbursement covers it but I could cover it out of pocket regardless.

19 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 15, 2026 9:49 AM)

18: University of or Cal State? Our state university has on-line programs but they re not video classes, just asynchronous text-based things. I don't learn well that way. They mostly seem to be degree programs.

20 (Megan on Jan 15, 2026 9:53 AM)

I am lining up to switch jobs right now. I'm planning to retire from working for a state agency in a year and draw my pension so that I can lecture more at Sac State. I really, really love teaching, and a couple classes per semester sounds perfect to me.

Sherry used to be linked from here regularly. She now is one of the career consultants you mentioned. https://daymarkcareers.com/
She's wonderful.

21 (jms on Jan 15, 2026 10:00 AM)

My job is pretty ideal for me in lots of ways -- I like and respect my colleagues, I believe in the mission of my organization, I'm well-remunerated, and the job gives me a lot of flexibility and freedom. However, it's pretty stressful a lot of the time, which I hate, and while I'm very good at some parts of my job, there are other parts to which I am (to put it diplomatically) less ideally suited.

If I could do it all over again? Maybe museum exhibit design. Or art/artifact restoration/conservation. Basically I think I would like to work at a museum doing something moderately challenging and intellectually engaging, without the constant stress of being an artist or a curator.

22 (teofilo on Jan 15, 2026 10:02 AM)

I love my job and I'm very happy with the way my career progression has worked out.

23 (Minivet on Jan 15, 2026 10:05 AM)

University. It is all online, a little unsatisfactory in terms of interaction since the only interactive part is posting on a discussion board for credit in somewhat stilted ways where I think a lot of LLMs are being used by students, but textbook / homework / exams get me most of what I need. I understand this is a common mde community college classes have converged on.

24 (teofilo on Jan 15, 2026 10:05 AM)

Turns out public-sector middle management is the role for me.

25 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 15, 2026 10:05 AM)

20: Thank you for the link!

26 (Unfoggetarian: “Pause endlessly, then go in” (9) on Jan 15, 2026 10:08 AM)

I'm increasingly frustrated with my job for three main reasons:

1. Something has gone seriously wrong with the students. They can't do math, they seem to not even know how to talk to each other, and they've cheated on every homework they've ever done.

2. The profession (math specifically, and academic research generally) feels like it's entered a death spiral. There's no jobs. The state doesn't seem to want us to exist.

3. Our new leadership (President, Provost, Board) is Trumpian (by which I don't even primarily mean that they're conservative, I mean that they're children who understand nothing and like to break things).

I'm not sure that I could have given myself better guidance though, these are all only clear in retrospect and weren't predictable elements of the job.

27 (heebie on Jan 15, 2026 10:32 AM)

1. Something has gone seriously wrong with the students. They can't do math, they seem to not even know how to talk to each other, and they've cheated on every homework they've ever done.

I'm convinced there's only two ways to deal with this:

The practical way: homeworks are barely worth points, or maybe just a completion grade, and then you substitute quizzes. (This solution is a bummer for lots of reasons, but it's what I'm going with. It monopolizes class time and the quizzes bring their average down, compared to fake-homework.)

The impractical way: a 3-credit course should meet 6 hours a week, and half of it is just "work together on your homework, with the instructor rambling around, until concentration and struggle becomes the norm of how you work." You'd have to have a university that valued this issue enough to compensate instructors for double time.

28 (heebie on Jan 15, 2026 10:34 AM)

I sometimes wonder if I would have come to Texas in 2000 if I'd known how things would have played out after 2016.

The thought experiment breaks down because I probably would have gone to Florida instead, to be close to my parents, and that's even more demoralizing than Texas, I think.

29 (Unfoggetarian: “Pause endlessly, then go in” (9) on Jan 15, 2026 10:36 AM)

Completely agree with you on both points!

It still is worse than the old way. All my math *exams* in college were take homes! You can't even do that with grad students now.

30 (heebie on Jan 15, 2026 10:36 AM)

I think I might have really enjoyed being a seamstress/tailor.

31 (Megan on Jan 15, 2026 10:38 AM)

I feel like I've come back around to pre-internet technology. I have them hand write materials and tests that I used to allow to be submitted by email. After reading assignments, I do the Socratic method rather then submitting summaries. Nothing that arrives via the internet is likely to come from them, so they have to go back to learning methods from my childhood.

32 (Megan on Jan 15, 2026 10:38 AM)

Not really email. Through Canvas.

33 (Southern New England Resident on Jan 15, 2026 10:47 AM)

26: I mean that they're children who understand nothing and like to break things

I feel this way about my organization. In 2016, I felt like they wanted to fight. Now, there's silence and explaining why we won't be targeted like Harvard.

34 (Chetan Murthy on Jan 15, 2026 10:47 AM)

28: Heebie, your words, mutatis mutandis, is my thought too. In 2017 I was on the cusp of retirement, but hadn't fully retired yet. If I'd know where we'd be a decade later? Oh hell no I wouldn't have retired, and I'd definitely have found a job overseas, geez louise. Now? It'd be -hard- to get back into the biz, b/c everything in IT has changed -- everything.

35 (von wafer on Jan 15, 2026 11:05 AM)

Several things can be true at once, it turns out.

1) My industry is immediately imperiled and also in the midst of a period of longterm decline. Consequently, I find the professional now alarming and a bit sad.

2) I started doing administrative work a bunch of years ago, and I often wonder, especially given the above, if that was a mistake. On the other hand, I got into administration for reasons that, even in retrospect, made good sense.

3) I'm very lucky to have the job I have and even luckier to have had the career I've had. I'm likely to retire before things get really bad for my industry. But who knows. The future is harder to predict than the past.

4) I suppose if I could have any other job, I might want to be an NBA point guard. But I suspect I'd find the culture of the locker room and the league overwhelmingly annoying, even more so than the occasional department meeting. In short, see above: I'm very fortunate and try quite hard not to lose sight of that good fortune.

36 (MattD on Jan 15, 2026 11:15 AM)

I still love teaching, although assessment is more and more disheartening. I used to hate grading essays because it was so time-consuming to do well, but at least I knew that having the students do the work benefitted them. Now it's clearly not worth assigning take-home essays, and I can't help but feel like I'm letting the students down by assessing them in other ways. (The other ways are easier to grade, though!)

I'm less and less excited by research. I think the topic I work on is interesting and important, but I struggle to see the link between the work I do and the real world. Partly that's just a motivational problem about me, since lots of my colleagues do just fine. But part of it is about the broken structure of academic publishing.

The one thing I might try to steer younger me to consider is that the autonomy and security of a tenure-track job is amazing but location-limited. I have no real prospect of moving somewhere else. I like where I live well enough, but it's 2,000 km from my family (and my wife's family), and from the part of the world I would most like to live. Had I chosen a different career, I might enjoy my job a bit less (and probably make less money) but I might enjoy my non-working life a lot more.

37 (NickS on Jan 15, 2026 11:40 AM)

Overall I've been both lucky and generally satisfied with my career.

I've also spent the last several years feeling some degree of burnout almost all of the time, so if there's anything I would have liked to change it would be figuring out how to limit some of the stretches of peak stress.

Now, reading all of the stories about the new AI coding tools I'm little worried that it isn't far away from rendering a big chunk of my skills obsolete, but that wouldn't be the worst thing.

I haven't used the AI tools at all but hopefully they will be a reasonable transition period in which the offer some help before they change the market such that people will no longer want to pay for what I do.

38 (Mooseking on Jan 15, 2026 12:04 PM)

It turns out that engineering is the mix of wrote technical but important that I like. I did stumble a bit on the design side, sticking with SE firms with bad leadership for too long -- but coming over to plan review was really good for me. (Instead of a project lasting weeks, even big things are rarely more than a day or two, then on to the next.)

My current role and company are hard to beat; I do like teaching peers, and they were happy to turn over as much of that type of work as I'd take. It started approaching management and I stiff armed it away... and they let me. "My team" is now "the team I'm a part of" since there are more managers, and the new boss has a heavy preference for assigning to people in his immediate physical vicinity instead of by expertise, etc., but those haven't been crippling changes. At least not yet.

39 (peep on Jan 15, 2026 12:59 PM)

I suppose if I could have any other job, I might want to be an NBA point guard

That reminded me that up until about 7th grade that was my career plan. I guess I realized that I wouldn't be tall enough to play any other position in the NBA. As it is I turned out to be even shorter than expected. There have been NBA players shorter than me, but I wonder if there's been an NBA player with hands as small as mine.

And now it occurs to me that even if von wafer and/or I had succeeded in becoming NBA point guards, our playing careers would have been over quite a long time ago.

40 (von wafer on Jan 15, 2026 1:10 PM)

39.2 is ageist and shortsighted. There's no reason, if we're considering the possibility that you and I could have been NBA point guards, not to believe that we could still be playing in our late 50s early 60s. Open your mind!

41 (peep on Jan 15, 2026 1:26 PM)

40 has humbled me.

42 (Moby Hick on Jan 15, 2026 1:29 PM)

Technically speaking, an entertainment attorney is also a point guard.

43 (heebie on Jan 15, 2026 1:41 PM)

I'm about to get a bite guard. So I'm also guarding my points.

44 (peep on Jan 15, 2026 2:04 PM)

I can never reach a settled position on my career path. Sometimes I think things like, "it's been a perfect job for me, except that it's pointless."

(and now I realized that it sounds like I'm making another point guard joke)

45 (Doug on Jan 15, 2026 2:34 PM)

The path to the kids I have -- who have grown into amazing, fun and interesting people, who like each other -- is so improbable that it would give Ford Prefect a headache, and with that in mind, I wouldn't change a jot or indeed a tittle.

But career qua career, I guess the big early inflection point is failing to complete the SF-171 federal form in triplicate, by hand, during my last semester of college when a bunch of other stuff was going on. (My college practiced (and indeed still practices) the ancient custom of comprehensive exams in your major, and if you don't pass them you don't get the degree. As a double major, I got a double dose of comps in that last semester.) Anyway, I had passed State's written and oral exams at that point; I don't know if completing the form would have removed the last roadblock to a job offer, or if they would have balked at hiring someone straight out of undergrad. I think I would have liked a Foreign Service career. I've been in the neighborhood of those jobs for a while now; I have a friend who may have topped out as head of consular in various places and another who's now a two-time Consul General and might make Ambassador (you'll never guess which is male and which is female); I think I would have done well, by and large. Assuming I made it through the Department's up-or-out structure, I would have had to last about halfway through Trump's first term to get to retirement, and that would have sucked.

I consciously chose not to try to move into NY publishing from a lovely (and horribly underpaid) role at an esteemed independent bookseller. I love books, and I actually found the competitive parts of the publishing business to be fun, but even in the early 1990s the Hollywoodification of publishing was visible, and as far as I can tell it has only gotten more pronounced. Plus I'm not one of those people who has a burning desire to live in NYC (tho I found it a relaxing alternative to Moscow), and that was a necessity in publishing. But I guess there's a timeline out there somewhere where I did make that jump, instead of haring off to Central Europe and falling in with reprobates making English-language newspapers amidst post-Communist weirdness.

After my Munich project got cancelled two weeks before Christmas, I turned down a position with the Bertelsmann Foundation. That would have been interesting, and maybe something of a continuation of what I got up to in Munich. On the other hand, Gütersloh is basically the court of the Mohns, and I would have been very fortunate not to fall when the person who would have been my patron got caught with his hands in the cookie jar a couple of years later. Bit of luck there.

At that point, I stopped having a career and have since been doing whatever my skills suit me for and more or less pays the bills. For the last seven years, that's been technical writing for a software company. (Our products help to ensure that the data submitted for new medications is accurate and reliable.) The company's good and humane. It's very German, in that it's engineer-driven and not aiming for rocket-style growth. I get loaned out on various marketing things, and right now that's a complete pain in the ass, because our very good quality management processes were not applied to a large-ish marketing project. One upshot of that is that nobody in particular is in charge of the various pieces, so things are being done and redone without the first doer being aware of the redoing until it is done. And then which version is legit? Sigh. Once this thing is out the door, I think I'm going to insist that any marketing work I do has at least some QM-lite.

On the whole, it's stupendously easy. I've kinda fallen into a team leadership role without meaning to, and I have to make sure I don't faff about completely so that my tasks move forward, and my team doesn't miss deadlines worse than the software developers do. Fingers crossed that it stays that way.

46 (Zedsville on Jan 15, 2026 3:15 PM)

Jam/elle Bo/uie is annoying the fuck out of me on Bluesky today and he never does that.

47 (Moby Hick on Jan 15, 2026 3:16 PM)

Leading people is for suckers. My boss has like six times the stress I do and maybe 15% more ability to decide things.

48 (lurid keyaki on Jan 15, 2026 3:24 PM)

46: why? just curious

49 (Zedsville on Jan 15, 2026 3:28 PM)

I wish I had started my current career right out of college instead being aimless for ten years. It would have been a better use of my time!

50 (Unfoggetarian: “Pause endlessly, then go in” (9) on Jan 15, 2026 3:58 PM)

46: I hate all opeds, so have never actually read him, but the Instagram algorithm has been showing me his stuff, not because he f the politics, but because of the menswear.

51 (lurid keyaki on Jan 15, 2026 4:15 PM)

He's clearly in the acceleration part of the cycle of getting too invested in your interactions with people on a particular forum, which really only ends with either voluntary disengagement or involuntary receipt of the boot. But his op-eds -- many but not all focused on U.S. political history, 1750-1900 or so -- are solid overall.

There is going to be a lot of mental strain and insanity among people in the U.S. under this government. Most will be invisible; some will not.

52 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 15, 2026 4:17 PM)

My life fades. The vision dims. All that remains are memories. I remember a time of chaos, ruined dreams, this wasted land...

When I was graduating high school, I thought maybe I would get a job in the environmental non-profit world. If I'd plugged away at that (and not dropped out of college for 9 years) I could probably be running such an organization right now. Which would have its upsides and downsides, certainly. After I did drop out, I was seriously contemplating descending into the demimonde of south-minneapolis-collectively-run-anarchist-food-service-businesses, but the one I would have started at wanted a 1 year commitment, which sounded like forever when I was 19. I could have been happy in that mode for awhile, certainly. Lots of strong friendships could have been maintained, but I also would have had to swallow a lot of bullshit, and of course never have any money or healthcare. Of course, I did give being an arts journalist, and later a theater manager a go, both of which seemed like they could have been lifelong career paths at the time. Ultimately though, maybe I was always just fated to be a tiny cog in the gears of the global financial machine. But there's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your body upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus -- and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it -- that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all!

53 (Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) on Jan 15, 2026 6:10 PM)

Speaking of things I hate about my job... Why is all academic-adjacent software so insanely shitty? We have to use some stupid thing called Elements to keep track of what we've done in the last year, so that the trustees can fire people, and it's just so buggy.

54 (Mossy Character on Jan 15, 2026 7:13 PM)

Salt was used also [...] for soldering joints of pipes and gutters.

?????
|>

55 (Chetan R Murthy on Jan 15, 2026 7:15 PM)

Unfoggetarian: I hate to have to be one to say this, but .... it's because it's a sub-species of "enterprise software". Enterprise software has a singular feature that it is purchased by people who will never use it. So the sales plan is pretty much to distract the buyer from the software itself: golf trips, nice dinners, hookers, blow, winery tours (a saleswoman I knew would bring her clients across the country from MA to Napa every year for winery tours), you name it. All to get 'em to sign on the line which is dotted. And then, yeah, -you- get to use it, and when it sucks you get pushed to just get your work done, or you'll get a bad evaluation. It takes a lot for the software to get blamed by the buyers (who, again, got nicely treated for having bought it).

It is what it is. In a better world, universities would band together and produce open-source software that was maintained by the consortium -- by the users and IT folks working with those users.

Ah well.

56 (Nathan Williams on Jan 15, 2026 7:38 PM)

I'm content with how things have gone for me - I got to enjoy a serious stint in Big Tech when the getting was good but was laid off just before things got truly weird and boot-lick-y. I'm now with a smaller, weirder organization but still get to play with many of the same toys (and a bunch of robots).

What I'm kind of worried about - and more so looking at my son's possible futures as he's about to hit high school - is the extent to which I was not in control. I was lucky and drifted here. Going to a hotshot high school happened because my dad knew about it and pushed me that way; going to a hotshot university kind of followed naturally from having been a student there; every one of the jobs I've had since graduating college has been, essentially, being invited to apply or join; I've never had a job that I got from a cold, intentional search. So I don't feel like I know how to steer my education or career or anyone else's.

57 (Spike on Jan 15, 2026 10:05 PM)

In the past year job has gone from writing code to watching AI write code.

Today I was thinking about becoming a trained herbicide applicator so I could spend my days spraying invasive Japanese knotweed. So, maybe either that, or international diplomacy.

58 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 15, 2026 10:18 PM)

56.2: Eh, I know lots of people from my not-particularly-distinguished inner-city high school who've gone on to pretty hotshot careers. Same with my classmates from a standard landgrant research university. The *only* job I've ever had in my life that resulted from a "cold, intentional search" was making submarine sandwiches for $6/hour. Everything else I've ever done has been got through connections that I made myself without anything much in the way of a pedigree.

59 (teofilo on Jan 15, 2026 10:46 PM)

I've done plenty of cold intentional job searches that have succeeded. Connections help, of course, but it's totally possible to find a job without them even now.

60 (fake accent on Jan 16, 2026 12:34 AM)

Every job I've had has been from an intentional search but in my last job search (for my current job), I did know a number of people who already worked there. I still applied "cold", but a friend did contact me to make sure that I knew about the opening since they didn't know I'd already applied. I'm sure it helped that I knew people at MPOW already, but on the other hand apparently one of the other finalists was an inside candidate and you can't really be more of an insider than that.

In retrospect, I would not have applied to my current job at all if I'd known what the first few years would be like. I nearly left within a few months and only didn't because I felt like it would be hard to job search after that since I didn't feel very established in my career.* Then Covid started and I needed to help my parents with lots of things, including medical treatments (cancer, not covid). So all the good things about my job - good people, benefits, flexibility to work remotely - outweighed my dissatisfaction with the day-to-day work. The job is better now because we've improved software (that we make ourselves, for ourselves) enough that the worst parts of my job mostly went away.** I still would like to do something else, especially when I think about twenty more years until retirement.

I've never had an idea of an ideal job. My short time in journalism, where I did a lot of research support for a couple of reporters, plus things like combing news wires for stories to re-post (under syndication agreements), was the job that most interested me. But the 24 hour news cycle and the pressures of web publishing also made some days kind of dull and monotonous because you kind of had to put up new stories all day even if you could tell that they weren't all that important. I never had to write stories myself, and hearing reporters being under pressure to file x number of stories by 11 AM every day did not make that job sound appealing.*** What I would have loved to do is have a career doing primarily research support. But it's basically not a job that can sustain a career any more. I didn't like the idea of continually applying for new jobs as organizations closed down their research departments or libraries, or simply shut down altogether.

*Someone hired for a completely different job in MPOW stayed for only two weeks. I think for that person, they wanted to do a job that required knowledge of the law, but as a former attorney they didn't want to return to being a lawyer or lawyer-type work. And then they immediately got questions that were essentially requests for legal advice and said "nope" and left. The position was revised to be more not-lawyer-y and it took something like a year to hire someone.

**There were days where I spent essentially all of my time filling in gaps created by software problems.

***I think that aspect of the work has improved under subscription models. The heyday of search-traffic ad-supported journalism meant you had to keep your front-page always changing to get more clicks. I think subscription models provide enough certainty that you can work at a more measured pace.

61 (heebie on Jan 16, 2026 3:15 AM)

I did one cold intentional search when I graduated and I'm still at that job.

The population cliff that's been foretold since 2009 has arrived, and it's making this place stressful, as leadership responds badly to things which really have no good solution.

62 (SP on Jan 16, 2026 4:47 AM)

Similar path to 56, I've had all my jobs due to connections. My parents live in a wealthy suburb with public schools that feed to top colleges, top college led to top grad school, my advisor had a startup that hired me, I got my first job as a manager through a connection with someone who had worked at the startup, my current job was via someone who I had hired early on in the role and who left and moved up and hired me.
I don't feel like I do "networking" in the sense of trying to find connections with random people in the field, but I definitely am of the school of "don't piss off your coworkers, one may be your boss some day."
Probably the only risky thing I did that worked out was I joined the first group of grad students in my advisor's lab his first year as a professor. Some people said that wasn't a good idea because of tenure pressure, uncertain funding, lack of mentors, etc. He's now a frequent mention for a Nobel so I made the right bet there.

63 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 16, 2026 5:01 AM)

62: no post-doc in the modern age is pretty impressive.

64 (mc on Jan 16, 2026 5:28 AM)

||
Evil Does Not Exist is a very unsettling film.
|>

65 (politicalfootball on Jan 16, 2026 5:37 AM)

Enterprise software has a singular feature that it is purchased by people who will never use it.

This, and the rest of 55, explains a lot about my professional responsibilities. I have taken to explaining to people that if [three-levels-higher manager] tells me to do something, and Workday tells me to do something else, I do what Workday tells me to do. And Workday tells me to do some pretty dumb shit.

66 (Moby Hick on Jan 16, 2026 5:44 AM)

He's now a frequent mention for a Nobel so I made the right bet there.

You can just mug a Venezuelan for those.

67 (SP on Jan 16, 2026 5:51 AM)

That only works for the peace prize, that's like the Grammy of the Nobels, like 10% of world leaders have one.

68 (Moby Hick on Jan 16, 2026 5:55 AM)

It's only been tried for the peace prize.

69 (SP on Jan 16, 2026 5:58 AM)

63- Me or my advisor? He became a professor straight out of grad school which has always been quite rare. Back when I was finishing, if you knew you didn't want to go into academia (which I definitely didn't) it was fairly common to get an industry job without a postdoc. More recently I've hired people straight out of grad school but there are a lot more applicants now who did postdocs first even if they were planning to go to industry.

70 (Barry Freed on Jan 16, 2026 5:59 AM)

64 64 unsettling and great. I think heebie would like it since it deals with the building of a puppy in a remote picturesque village and the community's response (a different kind of puppy but no less destructive of the local environment). Also, I could have watched Hitoshi Omika chop firewood for hours.

71 (politicalfootball on Jan 16, 2026 6:01 AM)

My career has been a mix of connections and intentional search, and a bunch of lucky breaks. My biggest break came during college, when -- because of a recommendation from a professor -- I got a job fetching coffee for professionals in my small and shrinking field and worked my way up from there. So that counts as a connection.

Another big break was an intentional search. That put me on a path where I was discovered by my current employer -- who found me not because of my accomplishments or qualifications, but because the wife of one of his employees thought I was a nice guy and it would be good if her husband worked for me.

My career has taken a series of weird turns, but I set myself on a path quite deliberately in college and stayed basically on that path, and wouldn't change anything important. I've had excellent luck.

72 (Moby Hick on Jan 16, 2026 6:01 AM)

Trump was only the second person to be "gifted" a Nobel Prize. The first was Goebbels.

73 (Mossy Character on Jan 16, 2026 6:15 AM)

i thought the Danes dissolved it in acid?

74 (ajay on Jan 16, 2026 6:24 AM)

Different prize. Goebbels was sent a Literature Prize medal by this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knut_Hamsun

75 (Mossy Character on Jan 16, 2026 6:50 AM)

70; True, but. Shudder. (Heebie, DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE, it'll put you to sleep or give you a heart attack, probably both.)

76 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 16, 2026 7:12 AM)

69: Your advisor.

77 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 16, 2026 7:13 AM)

72: That is so goddamn lame. The man has no shame.

78 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 16, 2026 7:16 AM)

Further to 76. I wouldn't have been afraid to pick him precisely because they were willing to give him a professorship without a post-doc first.

79 (Barry Freed on Jan 16, 2026 7:27 AM)

I'm absolutely delighted with how my career has turned out even if I never finished that PhD and I love living overseas.

80 (heebie on Jan 16, 2026 8:22 AM)

70, 75: I am the feeblest little flower about watching stressful movies. I dipped out of Stranger Things and The Wire on the first episodes.

81 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 16, 2026 8:51 AM)

45: so that my tasks move forward, and my team doesn't miss deadlines worse than the software developers do.

You have chosen well...

82 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 16, 2026 8:52 AM)

81: Nothing is more organizationally chaotic than when some slack asses actually come in on time and catch everyone unawares.

83 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 16, 2026 9:10 AM)

At some point I reached the point of understanding that doing anything differently than my drifty serendipitous career would require me being a different me. Which, sure, yeah, go for it; but then all bet are off. I ended up for the last 15 years or so in kind of a personalized (somewhat overpaid) role.

I can't complain but sometimes i still do.

84 (peep on Jan 16, 2026 9:31 AM)

83.2: JP is Joe Walsh?

85 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 16, 2026 9:37 AM)

Career paths remotely possible that I pretend I would have liked are mostly academic ones in the area of (waves hands) information/evolution/organizational dynamics...

Something where I could pretend I was capable of writing something along the lines of The Sciences of the Artificial, The Unaccountability Machine or Why Big Fierce Animals are Rare.

But clearly lacked drive, focus and discipline. I am an astonishingly lazy person other than for quixotic side quests (and visiting and hiking in nice outdoor places).

86 (peep on Jan 16, 2026 9:39 AM)

. But there's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your body upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus -- and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it -- that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all!

That's such a great speech! It always reminds me of Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdvEGPt4s0Y

87 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 16, 2026 9:41 AM)

84: NE Ohio adjacent. Heard him *very* early in his career (or looking it up, it was only that he went to Kent State but was in some local bands.)

88 (CharleyCarp on Jan 16, 2026 10:07 AM)

I've always liked lawyering. Turns out I like winning cases a lot more than I like losing them, and I've have a lot more of the latter than the former for the last while. It's not me, I swear, just clients with bad facts, or who've so thoroughly destroyed their credibility before I got there that even when we're right about the law, the judge just won't hear us. (That kind of client just simply refuses to believe that it's a human system, and that deportment actually counts for a lot.)

I had a good win in a water rights case last summer, and I think I did a pretty good job on a right-of-first-refusal case that is now fully briefed in the Montana Supreme Court.

My wife tells me I should retire nearly every day. I think she's afraid I'll just drop dead some day -- which, yes, is possible, but no more likely in the office or heading down to Boise for a hearing than hanging around the house. Or driving to New Mexico to see some cranes.

89 (Moby Hick on Jan 16, 2026 10:14 AM)

I don't know where the cranes are in the winter, but all the boom lifts appear to spend the winter in South Central Pennsylvania.

90 (lourdes kayak on Jan 16, 2026 10:15 AM)

In a better world, universities would band together and produce open-source software that was maintained by the consortium

This was most of my job for a number of years, and we notched some victories, but also it turns out that when you have a university consortium responsible for developing software, everything will end up under the control of faculty and administrators with giant egos and magisterial disdain for the low-level mechanics of shipping an application that anybody will want to use. So the projects withered and died one by one, staff left and were not replaced, and now we just use the same vendor products as everyone else and my job is to keep the lights on. I don't like it very much, but software was obviously a better career path than entering the lottery to become a literature professor.

there's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious

My office looks onto the plaza where that speech was made. It is commemorated by a small cafe that serves okay panini and surprisingly terrible coffee.

91 (Moby Hick on Jan 16, 2026 10:15 AM)

My mom used to taunt my dad with, "Why don't you win all your cases like Perry Mason?" My dad's response was that he would if all his clients were innocent.

92 (Barry Freed on Jan 16, 2026 10:31 AM)

90.last have you tried throwing your body upon the gears and levers of the De Longhi?

93 (Moby Hick on Jan 16, 2026 10:42 AM)

My brother had this whole thing with pour-over coffee and it did taste pretty good. But maybe I'll just wash my coffee pot.

94 (lurid keyaki on Jan 16, 2026 10:52 AM)

92: De Longhi also made our household space heater, so I was confusedly trying to figure out how you knew that lourdes is freezing cold all the time and would roost inside it all day if she could.

I can't think of anything constructive to say about my career path. If I had it to do over, I would do everything differently.

95 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 16, 2026 10:58 AM)

94: OT, but I love my DeLonghi Radiant Heater

96 (Eggplant on Jan 16, 2026 11:09 AM)

I guess if I had the wand I'd want to get paid and maybe have people to talk with about this stuff.

97 (Barry Freed on Jan 16, 2026 11:10 AM)

I was just thinking of professional grade espresso machines

98 (fake accent on Jan 16, 2026 12:39 PM)

the projects withered and died one by one, staff left and were not replaced, and now we just use the same vendor products as everyone else and my job is to keep the lights on

I fully expect the system I work on to be replaced by a vendor product, but I also think it could take 10-15 years. The system is nominally open source but really just a custom system where other people can read the code. No one really uses the system but us. That gives it some advantages over vendor systems because they can't do many of the things that are specific to our org. But they generally have interfaces that are easier to use and I think if the gap gets small enough and new org leadership is more inclined to vendor products, there will be a shift.

99 (Doug on Jan 16, 2026 12:51 PM)

81, 82: Thanks!

Today I faffed about a lot less and was settin' 'em up and knockin' 'em down on the Aggravating Marketing Thingie.

some slack asses actually come in on time and catch everyone unawares

For sure. I do keep an eye on progress because sometimes a bunch of stuff will get taken off the for-this-release list and then things can start to move real fast.

100 (lurid keyaki on Jan 16, 2026 12:55 PM)

Relevant either to this or to today's thread:

Some ICE officials call Sheahan "Fish Cop" behind her back because of her previous stint running the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries in Louisiana. Sheahan knows there are people who think that, without any law-enforcement background, she isn't qualified for a job usually occupied by veteran ICE officials. "I absolutely think I'm qualified for the job," she told me. "Because at the end of the day, what really makes anybody qualified for any job?"

101 (Nathan Williams on Jan 16, 2026 4:25 PM)

||
I'm at a party and someone from Spain is literally talking about enlightened topless Europe.
|>

102 (Moby Hick on Jan 16, 2026 4:26 PM)

While topless?

103 (MIster Smearcase on Jan 16, 2026 7:03 PM)

I did something worthwhile but frustrating for about a decade and eventually burned out on it; but also pointless, frustrating things for most of another decade. Then, three years ago, I started doing what I had originally meant to do with my degree, and it's been good. It's still work. I don't wake up thinking oh thank god I get to do this, but I also don't go to bed on Sundays full of dread. It's often fulfilling and interesting, sometimes not. If I were doing it over again I'd focus on getting to this part a lot sooner. There's other stuff that sounds nice but it's all pure fantasy.

The one very clear thing is I wouldn't have started the PhD program I dropped out of. It was a bad time and the idea I was ever going to be an academic, in retrospect, preposterous.

104 (Moby Hick on Jan 16, 2026 7:34 PM)

ABD has worked for me. Mostly.

105 (Moby Hick on Jan 16, 2026 7:42 PM)

I probably shouldn't count it as a career goal, but I ate a whole bag of spice drops today. They were deficient in spice. CVS is a disappointment to me.

106 (Opinionated but Obscure Dune Character on Jan 17, 2026 2:54 AM)

The spice did not flow, it dropped?

107 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 17, 2026 4:35 AM)

105: Thinking the whole time, maybe *this* one will have more spice!

108 (lw on Jan 17, 2026 5:29 AM)

I would like to split my time between glassblowing, casting effective curses by tying magical knots that will disable the deserving recipients via bad judgement, also a tai chi group and plant population genetics consulting somehow.

109 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 17, 2026 7:10 AM)

99: For sure. I do keep an eye on progress because sometimes a bunch of stuff will get taken off the for-this-release list and then things can start to move real fast.

What i was mostly noting was that in general if you want to choose a group to not miss more deadlines than, the software developers are a good bet.

If you *really* want to "win" (or put off doing any work at all), peg yourself against a large (corporate or government) organization's document management project.

"While I appreciate the 'bias for action' proactive stance of our mission, sir, i really think that we can best leverage the synergies for maximum value-add by implementing *after* the visionary and transformational CIM (Common Information Management) initiative goes live. With CIM in place our work will be multiplicative, enabling us to eliminate duplicative and wasteful effort and exceed benchmark across all KPIs. In short we'll be immanentizing the fuck out of the eschaton."

110 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 17, 2026 7:35 AM)

35, 38, 39: point guard

On from the semi-plausible career fantasies to the truly fantastical:

Let me mention that in my disturbingly rich and detailed fantasy world* I have a number of embarrassing juvenile and alarmingly well-developed sports-related scenarios. Most have fallen by the wayside over the years, but a few well-worn ones survive to this day: Oh, you're not familiar with the Cleveland Indians defeating the Cincinnati Reds in the 1976 World Series due to the late-inning ninth game heroics of a rookie pinch hitter? What about the Cleveland Browns holding off the dominant Chicago Bears on the goal line in the 1986 Super Bowl thanks to the iron will of their world-weary veteran linebacker?...

Have many, many scenarios for wild and unlikely success in various scientific disciplines as well, which since about the mid-90s are usually used mostly as a vehicle for becoming a prominent political commentator blasting republican and media fuckheads alike. I will mention re: my JP Stormcrow persona here, this past year several of these have include me leading an NYC No Kings rally in a "Fuck the fucking New York Times" chant.

The answer is "none". None more emotionally and mentally healthy. "Can I have 'why have you not fulfilled your actual potential for 1000, Alex?'"

*Brautigan's Dreaming of Babylon is a potentially** fun read and captures my experience fairly well. It was so uncanny that I put off reading it for a while when I saw what it was about.

**It helps to have a general taste for Brautigan, which I do, but the gusty bus.

111 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 17, 2026 7:35 AM)

Off to ~~swim~~ ~~fantasize~~ nap.

112 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 17, 2026 7:39 AM)

I have actually been somewhat curious about how much of the population share this ~~delight~~ ~~affliction~~ neutral thing (and to what degree, assume everyone has it a little). Walter Mitty and the Brautigan book at least chronicle it in literature.

113 (Spike on Jan 17, 2026 7:48 AM)

I was supposed to be shortstop for the Orioles after Cal Ripken Jr. retired but it didn't really work out.

114 (AO3 on Jan 17, 2026 8:00 AM)

Oh, hi!

115 (LizardBreath on Jan 17, 2026 8:32 AM)

I will admit to have very clearly worked out what I would say to an ICE agent to both shame them and appeal to what remains of their humanity and patriotism. I'm not proud of myself for this, but it does kind of happen in idle brain moments. Of which I have many.

116 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 17, 2026 8:43 AM)

Lately my fantasy occupation has shifted to wizard/herbalist/cunning man in the woods of Maine. I could have done it too, but I was undercapitalized and lacking in sticktoitiveness.

117 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 17, 2026 9:15 AM)

115: I do find that I increasingly focus more on what I would say in various situations rather than the actual underlying sports/science/whatever content of the fantasy. For instance, the baseball player in 110's last game is helping the the New York Yankees win the World Series (following a mid-season trade after years with Cleveland) with a late game home run (not Game 7, not ninth inning, and just pads the lead--it's important to no be too unrealistic ...). He responds to a question about what was he thinking as he hit it and replies with "Thank God, I don't have to run hard." and then goes on to announce his retirement.

118 (peep on Jan 17, 2026 10:18 AM)

112: Raises hand in shame. When I said that my career plan was to be a NBA point guard, I left out that I had planned out my entire career from winning the state championship in high school, to leading Harvard to a shocking upset over UCLA in the NCAA finals, to winning 8 consecutive NBA championships for the New York Knicks. I could go on, but I will spare you

119 (lurid keyaki on Jan 17, 2026 10:57 AM)

I've had significant daydreams about doing pairs skating in midlife, which will probably increase during the Olympics, but it's creeping up on 2 years since I had the resources to train at all, and I would need to find a partner whose dream is also to skate around holding a middle-aged woman in the air and/or gently tossing her around. The bar is high, though.

120 (Moby Hick on Jan 17, 2026 11:04 AM)

They should combine skating with gymnastics but putting a set of bars on the ice.

121 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 17, 2026 12:09 PM)

putting a set of bars on the ice.

If you count a 6'x8' shack with a case of Hamm's and a bottle of Rumchata as a bar, we've already got thousands of those up here.

122 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 17, 2026 1:33 PM)

BTW, the fascist march in Mpls today was a complete bust. Nazi wimp got hustled back to hide in his hotel room. It should be noted that it was the "peaceful" counter demonstration that routed the fash with extreme prejudice. If the handful of dorks that showed up had made it down Washington Avenue to where the *militant* demonstrators were waiting, they'd still be being scraped off the pavement.

123 (lurid keyaki on Jan 17, 2026 1:35 PM)

As horrible as it would be in every way, I would not be able.to suppress my laughter if Trump invaded Greenland and got Team USA kicked out of the Olympics.

124 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 17, 2026 1:41 PM)

118: Raises hand in shame.

~~One of us! One of us!~~ No! No shame! Just another paragon of creative mental and emotional channeling for a more contented you. If you don't safely channel your overwrought ambitions they can lead to all sorts of personal and societal calamities.

125 (Moby Hick on Jan 17, 2026 1:55 PM)

Hamm's does horrible things to my digestion.

126 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 17, 2026 3:38 PM)

Maybe that's because you're not a bear

127 (Doug on Jan 17, 2026 3:51 PM)

109: This is the way.

128 (MH on Jan 17, 2026 4:30 PM)

126: Maybe you weren't supposed to drink 8 of them?

129 (peep on Jan 17, 2026 4:34 PM)

128: Is this the ghost of Moby past?

130 (Moby Hick on Jan 17, 2026 4:38 PM)

Sorry. Me being lazy.

131 (SP on Jan 17, 2026 6:27 PM)

When I was a kid they had commercials encouraging teens to come try out for the US skeleton team. I was like, I know how to go sledding, I could do that. Never tried out, but then years later I met someone who raced skeleton for Israel in the 18 Olympics. This year I think he's doing Israeli bobsled.

132 (Moby Hick on Jan 17, 2026 8:54 PM)

I just learned that it's "ASAP Rocky" not "A.S.A.P. Rocky." Next, I'm going to learn if it's "Bon Iver" or "Bon Iver."

133 ( on Jan 18, 2026 2:02 AM)

LIEUTENANT PRAISE-COD BARE-ARSE, a Puritan: Snaggle, thou villain! I cannot touch this landmine without it explodes in my hands! How am I to use it?

SNAGGLE, a despicable soldier: Why, sir, 'tis self-denying ordnance.

(BARE-ARSE beats him cruelly)

-- from 'Tis Pity She's A Qualified Ammunition Technical Officer (pub. 1668, banned 1669)

134 (apostropher on Jan 18, 2026 10:00 AM)

132: further learning, it's not ASAP Rocky, it's A$AP Rocky. Who is an entirely different rapper than Aesop Rock.

135 (apostropher on Jan 18, 2026 10:06 AM)

First meeting.

136 (Moby Hick on Jan 18, 2026 5:23 PM)

If 133 isn't ajay, we have a problem.

137 (Moby Hick on Jan 18, 2026 6:20 PM)

Someone in the bar is pointing out that I'm the same age as John Brown when he raided Harper's Ferry.

138 (Moby Hick on Jan 18, 2026 6:20 PM)

And he's not right.

139 (Moby Hick on Jan 18, 2026 6:31 PM)

He's trying to get me to read Cormac McCarthy.

140 (Moby Hick on Jan 18, 2026 6:42 PM)

He also skipped the tab. The fuck.

141 (Moby Hick on Jan 18, 2026 6:59 PM)

You know that weird couple from the news stories about how white people should have more kids? He was wearing the glasses that the woman there had.

142 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 18, 2026 7:45 PM)

At least he did not have a weird bowl hair cut?

143 (Moby Hick on Jan 18, 2026 8:12 PM)

No. And the woman he was with looked normal.

144 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 18, 2026 10:27 PM)

Did you ever read William Gibson's "The Belonging Kind"? Could have been one of them, except really inept.

145 (simulated annealing on Jan 20, 2026 3:03 AM)

This was a lovely, honest thread that I enjoyed reading. Seems to have wandered away so I won't add my specifics, but I found it fascinating and reassuring to read lots of mid-late career reminiscence, some satisfied much not. You all are beautiful. To me.

146 (ajay on Jan 20, 2026 4:04 AM)

If 133 isn't ajay, we have a problem.

I resent that. There must be dozens of commenters here who post puns that only make sense in the context of an anachronistic use of modern military terminology in Restoration England.

]]> 2026-01-15T06:50:45-07:00 A labored (labrador) metaphor for the front page https://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2026_01_11.html#019104 Suppose the latest industry trend is to build PUPPIES everywhere. Suppose puppies are extremely intensive users of water and electricity, although there are variations and improvements - closed-loop cooling system? evaporative cooling system? required back up generator so that ERCOT can shut off grid power to the puppy during peak usage? etc etc. Suppose further that this is a pretty clear-cut environmental disaster for Texas. The grid and electricity demands can probably be sorted longterm, although in the shortterm, rates would rise. The water is a much tougher issue, because Texas has designed itself a system with very few regulatory checkpoints and then is notoriously reluctant to ever pump the brakes on what rich people want to do with public goods like a water table. There is a local version of this issue playing out. I am gearing up to argue (locally) against the environmentalists and leftists, and if I'm going to do that, I want to vet the hell out of my argument here. So I want you all to nitpick and determine whether I should stake out a more middle of the road argument, or go for broke. Local puppy details under the jump.... 19104@https://www.unfogged.com/ Suppose the latest industry trend is to build PUPPIES everywhere. Suppose puppies are extremely intensive users of water and electricity, although there are variations and improvements - closed-loop cooling system? evaporative cooling system? required back up generator so that ERCOT can shut off grid power to the puppy during peak usage? etc etc.

Suppose further that this is a pretty clear-cut environmental disaster for Texas. The grid and electricity demands can probably be sorted longterm, although in the shortterm, rates would rise. The water is a much tougher issue, because Texas has designed itself a system with very few regulatory checkpoints and then is notoriously reluctant to ever pump the brakes on what rich people want to do with public goods like a water table.

There is a local version of this issue playing out. I am gearing up to argue (locally) against the environmentalists and leftists, and if I'm going to do that, I want to vet the hell out of my argument here. So I want you all to nitpick and determine whether I should stake out a more middle of the road argument, or go for broke.

Local puppy details under the jump.

Continue reading A labored (labrador) metaphor for the front page...

Comments (53)

Comments on this Entry:

1 (Moby Hick on Jan 14, 2026 7:02 AM)

I'm willing to start a Butlerian Jihad just over Copilot being worse than Clippy.

2 (Mossy Character on Jan 14, 2026 7:07 AM)

3 (Mossy Character on Jan 14, 2026 7:11 AM)

Water reclaimed from where? And it would be evaporated by the datacenter?

4 (heebie on Jan 14, 2026 7:14 AM)

The power plant's cooling is run on reclaimed water from the local municipal system. The puppy would be getting their water from a different, private water company.

5 (Mossy Character on Jan 14, 2026 7:18 AM)

I would want the right to pre-empt their water consumption in a drought. Also extort the guy for a bunch of houses or land or whatever you want. (Cash up front, right now! It's a bubble!) Maybe also make him take measures that will the make the site more usable for other industry if/when the datacenter folds. IDK what that means. Better roads, floors, drainage?

6 (Moby Hick on Jan 14, 2026 7:22 AM)

How would you enforce the drought clause?

7 (Mossy Character on Jan 14, 2026 7:25 AM)

I would email heebie.

8 (heebie on Jan 14, 2026 7:25 AM)

I'm pretty sure we can't legally put any restrictions on their water. It's between them and a separate private utility company whose CCN happens to overlap with the city boundaries slightly. (CCN is the bounds in which the utility gets to have a monopoly.)

9 (heebie on Jan 14, 2026 7:26 AM)

Once I got the email from Mossy, I'd make an orange post title.

10 (lurid keyaki on Jan 14, 2026 7:31 AM)

6: sexbots with AR-15s, right?

11 (Mossy Character on Jan 14, 2026 7:32 AM)

So weird. Anyway, sounds like the water isn't your problem.

12 (Moby Hick on Jan 14, 2026 7:34 AM)

Any trade where the counterparty is rich or powerful, you can pretty much assume that in the current environment they won't be held to a promise of future behavior.

13 (Mossy Character on Jan 14, 2026 7:34 AM)

10: Yes! I was still fumbling a Malcolm McDowell joke.

14 (Mossy Character on Jan 14, 2026 7:35 AM)

12: Yes! Cash up front!

15 (Moby Hick on Jan 14, 2026 7:41 AM)

I kind of want a dog, but also don't want to take care of one.

16 (heebie on Jan 14, 2026 7:44 AM)

11: Well, all the water companies draw from the same underlying aquifers and surface water sources.

17 (Moby Hick on Jan 14, 2026 7:46 AM)

Texas is below Nebraska on the same aquifer. My poor beans.

18 (Mossy Character on Jan 14, 2026 7:46 AM)

If you connect it to your sump pump it'll take care of itself.

19 (Mossy Character on Jan 14, 2026 7:50 AM)

16: In that case, your neighbors are right. After the data business has come and gone you'll still be living there, with less aquifer. And, in the interim, less surface water.

20 (Moby Hick on Jan 14, 2026 7:50 AM)

My pump can lift water like 10 feet. I need at least 900 feet.

21 (Mossy Character on Jan 14, 2026 7:51 AM)

Dogs only have four.

22 (heebie on Jan 14, 2026 7:53 AM)

19: Even though infinitely many can be built just outside the city limits with zero regulation? Is it worth it to stop this one, which would bring in tax revenue?

I'm asking sincerely. This is the heart of the issue.

23 (Mossy Character on Jan 14, 2026 8:05 AM)

22: What are the politics across your aquifer? I assume water gets attention.
On rereading, I see you said closed-loop cooling. This mitigates 16. But, as you know closed loops are only partly closed, and I assume Moby is right about enforcement -- once built, the operator might just fuck you and burn the water anyway.
I think there might be a significant distinction to be drawn between the developer and the eventual operator/s of the datacenter. I think it's eminently possible that the operator would be a fly-by-night sub^n contractor.

24 (heebie on Jan 14, 2026 8:11 AM)

23: The Edward's aquifer is the most sensitive and has fairly robust protections, at least for Texas. In other words, it has a governmental body with very strict system of doling out credits, and has legal standing to enforce. This was established in the 90s under the endangered species act. I don't know what kinds of legal losses it suffers to industries, though.

The surface water and other systems (Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer) have very low levels of regulation, but also aren't as sensitive. The worry here is more about actually running out.

The experts tell me that it's a race against time, because the only longterm solution is reclamation and desalinisation, and we're just trying to get those to be more financially viable.

25 (heebie on Jan 14, 2026 8:14 AM)

22: The actual data center is probably these guys, but they are avoiding the city issues like the plague. The developer is just a real estate guy.

26 (heebie on Jan 14, 2026 8:35 AM)

The other part that I'm struggling to articulate kindly is why the local activists have done basically nothing about the other 4-5 local puppies.

The charitable argument is that it involves scaling up your activism and joining forces regionally, and trying to lobby the state to allow counties to regulate water usage. That is the actual path forward.

But that's super difficult and requires operational knowledge beyond just getting people to show up to local council and planning meetings, and passionately speak for their allotted 3 minutes.

The uncharitable argument is that the local activists are enthralled to a couple of farmers who literally live next to a power plant, but earnestly believe that living next to a power plant and a puppy will cause their cows to keel over and their horses to stop laying eggs from the bad vibes, like a modern day Cold Comfort Farm.

27 (Alex on Jan 14, 2026 8:42 AM)

I honestly think a lot of people have come to believe puppies have giant cooling towers belching steam like coal-fired power kittens.

28 (Moby Hick on Jan 14, 2026 8:47 AM)

For reasons we now use a wooden spatula for most cooking. I feel like the guy in Cold Comfort Farm scrubbing the pot with a stick.

29 (Mossy Character on Jan 14, 2026 8:48 AM)

An important assumption heebie is making is that this center will in fact yield tax revenue. I think that is dubious; I think there's every chance that this facility will become a stranded asset quite soon, possibly before they've even finished construction. That said, overbuilt infrastructure from previous bubbles was eventually profitable for those who could afford to hold it long enough. Eventually can be a long time though.
So, again, cash up front. Preferably literally cash.

30 (Moby Hick on Jan 14, 2026 8:54 AM)

Someone built a giant greenhouse to grow hydroponic vegetables in my old hometown. They went broke, but the next guy was able to get the assets more cheaply out of a bankruptcy sale. So that guy was able to go broke more slowly. Then during Trump I, ICE raided the town. I don't remember what happened next.

31 (Moby Hick on Jan 14, 2026 8:57 AM)

Except that the guy who accidentally blew up part of my old school was born in Guatemala.

32 (heebie on Jan 14, 2026 8:58 AM)

39 is a very fair point.

I also just did a quick dive on using reclaimed water in data centers, and it is something that is gaining traction. I just emailed council about how they might be able to thread the needle on public sentiment if they can entreat the developer to make it run on reclaimed water.

33 (Moby Hick on Jan 14, 2026 9:03 AM)

My piss is too good for that.

34 (Nathan Williams on Jan 14, 2026 9:23 AM)

What's the shape of the expected tax revenue? Real estate/property tax? If so, then 29 is in play - there are so many puppy projects around that it's almost certain that many of them will fail.
But otherwise, they don't create many jobs and they don't buy from local suppliers or service providers very much.

35 (Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) on Jan 14, 2026 9:26 AM)

This isn't helpful for you, but does anyone understand why these are being built in places with water problems? The usage isn't so huge that it'd be a problem if you just built them in the midwest, right?

36 (Moby Hick on Jan 14, 2026 9:30 AM)

I think that most large tech companies are actively seeking to do evil. It's really the simplest explanation.

37 (Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) on Jan 14, 2026 9:37 AM)

Famously Google got rid of "don't be evil" as a motto in 2018.

38 (md 20/400 on Jan 14, 2026 9:40 AM)

Do you have the option of taking on a wolf?

39 (Cala on Jan 14, 2026 9:48 AM)

There's a push to have puppies and kittens here, too, where we really don't have the water at all.

40 (lurid keyaki on Jan 14, 2026 10:18 AM)

I wonder what the most water-rich low-regulation states are. Somewhere in the south? South Dakota? My dad reports that there's plenty of interest in my waterlogged home state.

41 (Moby Hick on Jan 14, 2026 10:21 AM)

Why not Florida?

42 (heebie on Jan 14, 2026 10:41 AM)

The numbers they give are so absurd that's it's hard to know what's realistic. As in, up to $9 million/year. But if it were $1 million, that would be significant on a general fund that runs about $120 million.

43 (heebie on Jan 14, 2026 10:42 AM)

Because the code is lagging behind the reality, we don't yet have puppies as a permitted use. So this is strictly a zoning case, which severely limits how much bargaining we can do, in terms of cash up front, etc.

On the other hand, we are not offering any tax breaks or infrastructure. There's basically no financial risk to the the city whatsoever.

44 (heebie on Jan 14, 2026 12:03 PM)

I think I'm softening on the idea that OBVIOUSLY it makes sense to collect the tax revenue, but I'm not a hard no yet, either.

45 (heebie on Jan 14, 2026 12:08 PM)

I take back 43 - I forgot about restrictive covenants.

There's a funny dynamic where developers really hate being seen as the bad guy. So they take all the concessions they're prepared to make and blurt them out, every time they give a presentation, and it always sounds very self-serving and flimsy.

They'd make a lot more money if they swaggered in and said "Absolutely no concessions!" during their presentation, and then let Council draaaaag some concessions out of them, during the meeting.

Just embrace being the bad guy, and let the town pull you into a compromise position. Make a big show of how this ain't gonna make the boss happy, but.... ok let's do this!

46 (Mooseking on Jan 14, 2026 12:41 PM)

44: I know that it's adjacent to a power plant on at least one side, so no bad influence that way. What abuts the other neighboring sides? If it's just farmland, and they commit to closed loop recycled water use, it's probably a trade worth making. But more perfect union or a similar channel recently ran an interview with locals in towns that had datacenters move in and they're really disturbing to adjacent residential. Even if it IS farmland adjacent, they're likely to noise-blight their neighbors, which will lower their development options - so the immediate neighbors are smart to fight just for self-interested reasons.

47 (Zedsville on Jan 14, 2026 2:23 PM)

90 within 100 miles is insane

48 (heebie on Jan 14, 2026 3:38 PM)

46: there was a bit in the presentation about why some data centers are noisy and others aren't. The whole presentation was made by city staff, but came off as very pro-data center, but alleged that this would not be the nuisance kind.

But also, putting a neighborhood anywhere in that vicinity would be horrible sprawl for at least the next decade or two. It's REALLY far out there. The only reason it's in the city limits is that a skinny path was run out so that we could annex the power plant.

49 (heebie on Jan 14, 2026 3:40 PM)

47: right??

Here's the source, you can look up your own region worldwide: https://www.datacentermap.com/usa/texas/

50 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 14, 2026 6:44 PM)

30: Have you seen the videos of the retired postal worker in Nebr. who built earth-sheltered cheap greenhouses and did very well with them? Very demure.

51 (Moby Hick on Jan 14, 2026 6:58 PM)

I hadn't. Thanks.

52 (Mossy Character on Jan 14, 2026 7:14 PM)

Also, the local puppyphobia is very interesting. Thanks heebie!

53 (Mossy Character on Jan 14, 2026 7:48 PM)

This is all about one company, but it's symptomatic of the bubble as a whole. If your puppy isn't directly owned by MSFT/GOOG/AMZN it'll soon be a stray puppy. Gift links en route to heebie.
https://www.ft.com/content/41bfacb8-4d1e-4f25-bc60-75bf557f1f21

New Jersey-based CoreWeave, the largest neocloud company, began amassing chips when it launched in 2017 to mine cryptocurrency but pivoted to AI two years later. The company now claims to be the largest private operator of Nvidia GPUs in North America, with more than 45,000 chips.

https://www.ft.com/content/a96d65c1-8ba7-4055-b952-61c5b5d500fc

Imagine a caravan maker. It sells caravans to a caravan park that only buys one type of caravan. The caravan park leases much of its land from another caravan park. The first caravan park has two big customers. One of the big customers is the caravan maker. The other big customer is the caravan maker's biggest customer. The biggest customer of the second caravan park is the first caravan park. Sorry, not caravans. GPUs.

https://www.ft.com/content/daaf2a6a-27a9-46cd-b325-6ed497648f17

In an anonymous poll seen by FT Alphaville, RBC Capital Markets asked hedge-fund and long-only clients: "Does CoreWeave have a sustainable moat?" Ninety per cent voted no.

]]> 2026-01-14T06:37:39-07:00 Domestic Mess https://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2026_01_11.html#019103 Post for the front page to continue conversation about Minnesota, or Jerome Powell, or whatever other deranged shitstorm is being unleashed.... 19103@https://www.unfogged.com/ Post for the front page to continue conversation about Minnesota, or Jerome Powell, or whatever other deranged shitstorm is being unleashed.

Comments (49)

Comments on this Entry:

1 (lurid keyaki on Jan 13, 2026 10:22 AM)

We could talk about this Slate piece by a vet about applying to work for ICE:

At first glance, my résumé has enough to tantalize a recruiter for America's Gestapo-in-waiting: I enlisted in the Army straight out of high school and deployed to Afghanistan twice with the 82nd Airborne Division. After I got out, I spent a few years doing civilian analyst work. With a carefully arranged, skills-based résumé--one which omitted my current occupation--I figured I could maybe get through an initial interview.

The catch, however, is that there's only one "Laura Jedeed" with an internet presence, and it takes about five seconds of Googling to figure out how I feel about ICE, the Trump administration, and the country's general right-wing project. My social media pops up immediately, usually with a preview of my latest posts condemning Trump's unconstitutional, authoritarian power grab. Scroll down and you'll find articles with titles like "What I Saw in LA Wasn't an Insurrection; It Was a Police Riot" and "Inside Mike Johnson's Ties to a Far-Right Movement to Gut the Constitution." Keep going for long enough and you might even find my dossier on AntifaWatch, a right-wing website that lists alleged members of the supposed domestic terror organization. I am, to put it mildly, a less-than-ideal recruit.

2 (teofilo on Jan 13, 2026 11:09 AM)

That Slate story is wild.

3 (Moby Hick on Jan 13, 2026 11:21 AM)

Apparently, someone is now leaking the names of ICE and border patrol people. Plus, six people have resigned from DOJ because Trump is trying to prosecute Renee Good's widow.

4 (NickS on Jan 13, 2026 11:39 AM)

1/2: That is a remarkable story and worth reading. I don't know if "wild" is the precise word that I would choose -- that made me expect a different sort of escalation -- but it's quite the story.

5 (teofilo on Jan 13, 2026 12:18 PM)

Yeah, "wild" in a decidedly metaphorical way to be clear.

6 (fake accent on Jan 13, 2026 3:13 PM)

I'm surprised Mike Johnson commenting on the shooting hasn't made more news. Not for the substance of what he said, but because it's shocking that the least informed man in the United States House of Representatives actually saw a newsworthy video and commented on it. Think of all the things in the last few years that he never saw and couldn't comment on.

7 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 13, 2026 6:44 PM)

I was planning to send a guest post on J6 five years on for a few days after J6. In part because back on 2021 it really seemed to take until the weekend for the events to really sink in. (And I found the anniversary really, really depressed and disturbed me somewhat unexpectedly.)

But, events overtook that idea...
I do think that a way in which Trump/MAGA "getting away" with J6 shapes the current domestic/global messes is that "adult in the room" Maga-adjacent interests are less likely to peal away as they almost did on J6 itself. Sort of "if you come for the mad king you better not miss" situation. But they shouldn't woryy themselves, he loves nothing more than some return to the fold apostasy.

8 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 13, 2026 6:47 PM)

One sorta good thing about all of this is that people in MPLS are getting a lot of hands-on experience of the kinds of things we'd need to do in a general strike. The downside is that much of this is still very internet-dependent, and could easily evaporate if the internet wasn't easily available. Not even sure what's most significant right now. Things seem quieter tonight than they have been, but rumors have circulated that tonight is when the door-to-door disappearances are going to kick off in earnest. I guess we'll find out tomorrow morning. Apparently the situation at the Whipple Federal Building (Fort Snelling) is getting more violent by the day. Don't know if anyone will get shot to death right there, but a lot of people are being injured. Sturmabteilung types have been showing up there, trying to provoke more violence. That said, there's really nowhere public the ICE agents can go that they aren't immediately surrounded by people expressing their rage, so that's good too.

9 (Moby Hick on Jan 13, 2026 7:02 PM)

De-internetting is on my mind. Also rage.

10 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 13, 2026 7:28 PM)

As of 4 hours ago, 3 of the 4 unhoused Lakota men who were abducted from under a bridge by ICE about a mile from my house are still being held at Fort Snelling -- the former concentration camp for Lakota people in the 1860s.

https://ictnews.org/news/north-central-bureau/four-oglala-detainees-located-three-still-in-ice-custody

11 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 14, 2026 4:15 AM)

9: Rage is my weakness.

I begin to think about de-internetting from time to time but immediately stop as I absolutely know that I do not have the strength of will to do that, but at least I have the strength of will to not waste time thinking about doing it.

12 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 14, 2026 4:31 AM)

The events in Minnesota have been stark enough that some standard media have reported on it clearly, but for the most part they are just so enmeshed in their usual framing that they cannot just write what is happening.

CNN out with a banger of a headline: "New documents shed light on Renee Good's ties to ICE monitoring efforts in Minneapolis".
And the documents per the lede (and the rest of the story) are: "The woman killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis last week served on the board of her son's school, which linked to documents encouraging parents to monitor ICE and directing them to training."

And basically that is the whole frame for the story--the school board thing. It does note that at least 6 Federal prosecutors have resigned over the direction of the "investigation." There is also the reliance of "legal experts" to state the obvious: "But four legal experts who reviewed the documents for CNN said they largely describe nonviolent civil disobedience tactics practiced at American protests for generation, and "Legal experts who spoke to CNN said it was troubling that federal officials appeared to be focusing on low-level violations by protesters instead of the shooting of Good itself."

13 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 14, 2026 5:11 AM)

12 is all petty and stupid, but I'm just so weary of fascism coming to America being Kay Tur chirpily asking the Hennepin DA "Why don't you trust the FBI to do this investigation?" A society pummeled into submission by the cheerful assumption of regularity.

14 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 14, 2026 5:49 AM)

A guy who I like on media is Mark Jacob (He used to work at several Chicago papers).

Here is his proposal for how media should operate in this information environment with ten short points.
https://www.stopthepresses.news/p/how-to-build-a-radically-truthful

One that continues to irk me in its absence is "Go to war against rival news outlets' dishonesty." There's all this had-wringing over the lack of trust in media, maybe Fox and other RW media relentlessly attacking the MSM with almost zero pushback or counter has been a big part of this. I mean where's the old Front Page spirit, your competitors are lying to their readers/viewers, expose them. Theoretically that is one of the strengths of having free enterprise journalism, fucking compete and smash your rivals for fucks sake.

15 (politicalfootball on Jan 14, 2026 6:07 AM)

14.3: Yeah, and the professionalization of journalism has been built around the idea of eliminating that Front Page spirit. One thing I will say for old Rupert: Crimes like phone hacking are often the result of genuine journalistic motives in the Front Page tradition.

Nowadays, professional journalists mock the idea of "making ourselves the story." I'm sorry, but it's time to recognize that the ongoing failures of professional journalists are a big part of the story.

16 (ajay on Jan 14, 2026 6:37 AM)

One thing I will say for old Rupert: Crimes like phone hacking are often the result of genuine journalistic motives in the Front Page tradition.

No, this is a bad, ignorant take and you should feel very ashamed for writing it. You think that the Sun and the NOTW were hacking into the phones of corrupt politicians? Dishonest businessmen? Violent cops? You think it was because they had a thirst for breaking big stories and revealing the misdeeds of those in power?

They hired corrupt policemen who conspired to plant evidence, and private investigators who dealt drugs and collected child porn and bribed civil servants. The men they hired hacked into the phone of a thirteen-year-old girl who had been kidnapped and murdered. Her parents thought she was still alive as a result. They hacked into crime victims' phones. Footballers. Actors. It was all just panty-sniffing nonsense, for pointless prurient stories about the lives of little girls who had been battered to death, or the tiny trivial affairs of sportsmen and television presenters.

None of it broke a single story worth breaking. It was all for nothing.

17 (Mossy Character on Jan 14, 2026 6:41 AM)

||
Sore is about 30 minutes too long to be actually really good. Also the second live-die-repeat romance I've seen in a year.
|>

18 (politicalfootball on Jan 14, 2026 6:42 AM)

I have a few quibbles with the link in 14.2. For instance:

Trump is building a dictatorship. Say it. There's a mountain of evidence to support that obvious conclusion. He's not "testing the boundaries of the presidency." He's building a dictatorship. Tell the truth. Warn the public.

This is the sort of thing that Sulzberger points to when he complains about people urging the NYT to push advocacy in news columns. I think Sulzberger is basically right about this.

But there is plenty of room to just tell the plain truth, and to properly emphasize important facts. That's the point I was trying to get across here, talking about the Minnesota shooting:

If you want to understand these events and reckon with the national policy implications, here's the key question: Was the officer run over and hospitalized?

Trump's insistence that Obama was born in Kenya should have been a key feature of the coverage of him in 2015. The guy was nuts back then, and the question of whether a presidential candidate is nuts is important and requires reporting and analysis. You don't have to use the word "nuts," but you don't let ongoing craziness pass without remark.

When Trump says the ICE guy was run over and hospitalized -- and when he sticks to that story when pressed -- that's top-of-front-page news, with a sidebar analysis of what Trump accomplishes with crazy-talk and how (as JPS points out) he gets away with it in the media. Think about how the corporate media couldn't let go of Biden's lack of capacity in the debate. That's how you do it -- and it's what should have been done with Trump in that same debate.

And yeah, in a sane journalistic universe, the CNN story in 12 gets people fired. That's actual advocacy in news reporting. What makes it a firing offense is that it's also just crazy bullshit.

19 (Mossy Character on Jan 14, 2026 6:43 AM)

||
Speaking of, All You Need Is Kill coming soon. No spoilers.
|>

20 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 14, 2026 6:56 AM)

18.1: Agree. Thought that was the weakest point. But as you say there is a lot of context that is not emphasized in reporting that inexorably leads to that conclusion. No need to out the conclusion front and center in news verus opinion reporting

For instance on the Katy Tur question above the context includes:
1: Nearly completely unprecedented and certainly against FBI protocol that they cut off local law enforcement even when they are taking the lead.
2: The cascade of lies ranging from bonkers to subtle that has characterized the admin response so far.

21 (politicalfootball on Jan 14, 2026 6:57 AM)

16: That seems like a rather uncharitable reading of my point, but to clarify: Murdoch's people committed crimes that are properly considered crimes and for which they were insufficiently punished.

That said, much of the phone-hacking was a journalistic crime; the criminals were motivated by a desire to acquire and report news. There's a bit of No True Scotsman in your contention that if it's despicable, it is by definition not journalism.

22 (Mossy Character on Jan 14, 2026 6:58 AM)

||
A vice, for those following along, turns out to be a spiral or winding staircase.
|>

23 (Moby Hick on Jan 14, 2026 7:17 AM)

That is not something I had ever heard before. Learning.

24 (ajay on Jan 14, 2026 7:32 AM)

I would never have guessed that. From vitis, a vine, apparently - as is the carpentry tool, which I suppose is also spiral, like a vine climbing up a pillar or tree trunk. Vice as in a moral failure is vitium, a defect.

25 (ajay on Jan 14, 2026 7:33 AM)

There's a bit of No True Scotsman in your contention that if it's despicable, it is by definition not journalism.

I made no such contention.

26 (ajay on Jan 14, 2026 7:43 AM)

It is not good, though, to describe phonehacking as being in "the Front Page spirit" and "the Front Page tradition" - which is a film about journalists trying to save the life of a man who is about to be unjustly executed - and then, when challenged, retreating to the rather weak argument of, apparently, "everything in the newspaper, however disgusting and trivial, is journalism".

27 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 14, 2026 5:55 PM)

Reports are flying that feds just shot two people at 24th and Lyndale Ave North in Minneapolis. This is the main African American section of town for those unfamiliar with the city. Immigrants too, but not as much as other areas.

28 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 14, 2026 6:41 PM)

ICE story is that a Venezuelan man attacked an agent with a shovel so another agent shot him, then they raided a house and arrested 4 people total. Other reports were that shovel attacks were in response to the shooting, not the other way around.

29 (Mossy Character on Jan 14, 2026 7:07 PM)

Gotta respect a man who brings a shovel to a gun fight.

30 (Moby Hick on Jan 14, 2026 7:40 PM)

The shovel was probably right there. Because snow.

31 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 15, 2026 2:49 AM)

Reports based on activity at the Burlington ICE detention facility that ICE might be preparing a surge in Massachusetts. Wu has been prepping, but God only knows what they can do.

32 (ajay on Jan 15, 2026 4:03 AM)

Interesting - local authorities in Maine seem fairly sure they're next. https://themainemonitor.org/portland-lewiston-bracing-for-ice/

33 (Alex on Jan 15, 2026 6:02 AM)

West Midlands plod have excelled themselves: https://bsky.app/profile/gsds3.bsky.social/post/3mcfnpi6c4s2m

34 (Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) on Jan 15, 2026 6:26 AM)

Maine seems like insane choice, there's a competitive Senate race there!

35 (Opinionated Col. Kurtz on Jan 15, 2026 6:41 AM)

ARE MY METHODS UNSOUND?

36 (Moby Hick on Jan 15, 2026 6:47 AM)

This is completely pointless information, but apparently Kyrsten Sinema was busy sued for alienation of affection. Which is still a tort (or something), at least in North Carolina.

37 (lurid keyaki on Jan 15, 2026 6:51 AM)

34: they should have thought of that before they named their major city "Portland."

38 (apostropher on Jan 15, 2026 6:57 AM)

34: He has a grudge against Gov. Mills, as with Walz.

39 (heebie on Jan 15, 2026 7:59 AM)

And he keeps attacking Collins.

40 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 15, 2026 9:17 AM)

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/01/15/nation/trump-presidency-live-updates/

If Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, how can we fight back? (Non violently)

41 (heebie on Jan 15, 2026 10:36 AM)

I think I might have really enjoyed being a seamstress/tailor.

42 (heebie on Jan 15, 2026 10:36 AM)

WHOOPS.

43 (ajay on Jan 15, 2026 12:10 PM)

On topic because Trump needs someone to put the hems on him.

44 (SP on Jan 15, 2026 12:51 PM)

I was just up near the ICE Burlington facility* last night because I had to go to a clothing store across the street to get some pants altered. So totally on topic.

*it's in a suburban office park right next to one of the biggest (and still fairly economically viable) malls in the region. I'm sure all the goons are hitting Cheesecake Factory after work.

45 (Moby Hick on Jan 15, 2026 12:57 PM)

Burlington Coat Factory?

46 (Moby Hick on Jan 15, 2026 12:59 PM)

I associate the Cheesecake Factory with right wing extremists because of Wendy Bell.

47 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 15, 2026 1:22 PM)

44: Tne Burlington !all is so close to the Wegmans shopping area that I think it's an easy stop. They've also put apartments in in that area. It's practically their downtown.

48 (NickS on Jan 16, 2026 6:51 PM)

This is quite a story: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/trump-ice-agent-shooting-minneapolis-renee-good.html

The Signal call runs constantly in the background. The cadence of volunteers is efficient and clipped. C describes what they look for: SUVs and pickups parked in alleys; heavily tinted windows; out-of-state plates; erratic driving; the outline of tactical vests and sunglasses. It has become reflexive, they say, to glance into nearly every vehicle.

Even while so much of the action seems like it is being done car-to-car, people kept telling me the system is bigger than patrols. Volunteers are doing everything they can to keep vulnerable residents from having to be anywhere ICE might be. This means doing things like getting anyone who is trying to avoid ICE's scrutiny rides, child care, groceries. To understand this part of the work, people told me, I should talk to Anna, who is running one such effort called Neighbors Helping Neighbors.

49 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 17, 2026 4:33 AM)

46: I associate it with pro athletes. I 've eaten at one once and all I recall are *huge* portions.

]]> 2026-01-13T06:10:00-07:00 Tell me something good https://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2026_01_11.html#019102 Let's have a thread to just balance out the relentlessly awful news cycle. I guess if I had to start...we're getting a teeny bit of rain in the middle of a big drought. That's good! My teeth will feel nice and clean after I go to the dentist in a little bit. I get to skip half a day of workshops to go to the dentist. Good things.... 19102@https://www.unfogged.com/ Let's have a thread to just balance out the relentlessly awful news cycle.

I guess if I had to start...we're getting a teeny bit of rain in the middle of a big drought. That's good! My teeth will feel nice and clean after I go to the dentist in a little bit. I get to skip half a day of workshops to go to the dentist. Good things.

Comments (61)

Comments on this Entry:

1 (ajay on Jan 13, 2026 5:48 AM)

We've got involved with the local boardgames club and they are just a great bunch. The Discord is alive with confused Polish fathers whose 12 year old lives for his weekly game of Blood Slaughter Massacre 4th Edition or whatever and is very upset that no one has signed up to play against him, followed by a deluge of variously hairy people going "I'll play! I'd love to!" Nothing brings out the essential goodness of humanity more than the chance to recreate endless horror and carnage at a 28mm scale.

2 (Mossy Character on Jan 13, 2026 5:50 AM)

ICYMI:
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/what-are-biggest-vaccine-breakthroughs-coming-2026-we-asked-six-experts

3 (LizardBreath on Jan 13, 2026 6:29 AM)

Governor Hochul just announced that the 2d Avenue Q is going to be extended west up 125th St, connecting with every other subway line that goes uptown of 125th. This is both practically useful specifically for me; fixes a clear problem with the subway map that's been bothering me as a matter of good design for ages; and cuts travel time to large parts of Manhattan for everyone in the south and east Bronx by a whole lot. Maybe there's something wrong with the idea, but I think it's terrific.

And I'm continuing to be weirdly pleased with Hochul. She's fundamentally a centrist who's only governor by accident, but for the last year or more she's been firmly and loudly anti-Trump, and good on lots of things like this. She also just announced some statewide early childcare initiative with Mayor Mamdani. Good in itself, and good that she's not distancing herself from the Muslim socialist guy.

If this goes on, I'm going to stop saying that NYC and NYS state and local politics are weirdly worse than everyplace else. I still wouldn't call them better, but maybe not worse.

4 ( politicalfootball on Jan 13, 2026 7:22 AM)

Scott Adams is dead. (This is the right thread for that, isn't it?)

5 (ajay on Jan 13, 2026 7:34 AM)

The only happy thing you can think of is that some guy you didn't like has died in considerable pain?

6 (Moby Hick on Jan 13, 2026 7:37 AM)

He can't actively work to make the world a worse place now. Which he was doing even while very ill.

7 (Mossy Character on Jan 13, 2026 7:40 AM)

Is this the Dilbert guy? I liked Dilbert.

8 (Moby Hick on Jan 13, 2026 7:42 AM)

Yes, Dilbert was funny. Calling black Americans as a whole a "hate group" was less amusing.

9 (Mossy Character on Jan 13, 2026 7:45 AM)

That's sad.

10 ( politicalfootball on Jan 13, 2026 7:48 AM)

I hadn't thought about the considerable pain. Also good news!

I have mentioned before Moms Mabley's remarks on her ex-husband: "I was always taught never to say anything about the dead unless it's good. He's dead. Good!"

And when I'm feeling low, this always cheers me up.

Scott Adams was a very bad person who targeted kind, decent people with lies and mockery -- and indeed spent the latter part of his career gleefully promoting the idea of lies and mockery as an essential part of public life. He was a fascist fuck and I'm glad he's dead.

11 (Moby Hick on Jan 13, 2026 7:49 AM)

I'm trying not to take joy in anyone's death until the death that will bring too much joy to hide. But I think the world is a better place without Adams in it.

12 (Barry Freed on Jan 13, 2026 7:51 AM)

My parents listened to his podcast religiously

13 (Barry Freed on Jan 13, 2026 7:51 AM)

I'm sure whatever they find to fill that gap will be considerably worse

14 (ajay on Jan 13, 2026 7:53 AM)

Human tissues are probably not full of microplastics and studies suggesting otherwise seem to have been based on analyses that, for example, can't tell the difference between microplastics and fat.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/13/microplastics-human-body-doubt

15 ( politicalfootball on Jan 13, 2026 7:55 AM)

But more in keeping with the theme of the thread: I helped my AFAB son, who is finishing his junior year in college, buy a hybrid car. It's the first such car I have driven - a 10-year-old relatively low-mileage Toyota that is really nice to drive. My kid is delighted with it.

And my family and my wife's family have been matter-of-fact and entirely supportive about the whole trans thing. I have a Trumpy sister whose response to this news was flawless.

16 (Barry Freed on Jan 13, 2026 7:56 AM)

I've enjoyed some of the recent threads here, notably the movie game thread that ajay started and another funny one (that I can't recall right now). Good diversions.

17 (Barry Freed on Jan 13, 2026 7:57 AM)

Oh yeah, the Pagliacci thread; that was art.

18 (apostropher on Jan 13, 2026 8:06 AM)

The only happy thing you can think of is that some guy you didn't like has died in considerable pain?

Not the only one, but that's definitely a highlight. Still an awful lot of names left on the list, though. Can you get voodoo dolls on Amazon?

19 (Moby Hick on Jan 13, 2026 8:12 AM)

I'm boycotting Prime still.

20 (lurid keyaki on Jan 13, 2026 8:23 AM)

I was led to believe Etsy was the one-stop shop for supernatural afflictions.

21 (lurid keyaki on Jan 13, 2026 8:26 AM)

This was a social media highlight recently, although I think I'd reorder the last three words as "cheese puff astronaut."

22 (jms on Jan 13, 2026 8:41 AM)

17. The Pagliacci thread actually made me laugh out loud.

I've read several fun books in the past few weeks! (None of them are going to enter the pantheon of the classics, but they all fulfilled their job of entertaining and distracting my brain for a little while.)

- Varna Garg, This American Woman. I got this book because I caught the end of an interview with her on BBC News, and she was so bananas and hilarious that I wanted to know what I had missed. This was really entertaining. (Afterwards, though, I googled her and she might have terrible politics? I'm not sure.)

- Michael Connelly, The Proving Ground. The last few MC books have been SO TERRIBLE, and I'm SO GLAD that he didn't entirely forget how to write a novel. The decision to move away from cop stories was a good, and necessary, one.

- Kelley Armstrong, A Rip Through Time. The librarian at my local branch recommended this to me. I never would have chosen this novel for myself, if only because the cover art makes it looks so trashy. It is indeed pretty trashy! But well-written and just unstupid enough to be very fun to read.

23 (Cala on Jan 13, 2026 8:42 AM)

14: yup! There is not a plastic spoon in your brain. That's just the squishy brain fat.

24 (lw on Jan 13, 2026 8:43 AM)

Not sure this is the right spirit, but Bartok's piano improvisations on Hungarian peasant songs are great.

AI solution to an Erdos problem:
https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/115855840223258103

A drunk driver ran her truck into my house at 4:30 Christmas morning; insurance just paid out for the (fortunately minor) repair, here's to an occassionally functional rules-based society.

25 (ajay on Jan 13, 2026 8:51 AM)

The Pagliacci thread actually made me laugh out loud.

Thank you! I was mainly doing it for my own benefit - I couldn't stop thinking of Pagliacci jokes and needed somewhere to write them down.

26 (Moby Hick on Jan 13, 2026 9:12 AM)

24.last: There's a reddit for people driving into buildings in Pittsburgh. Maybe there's one in your area too.

27 (lourdes kayak on Jan 13, 2026 9:13 AM)

After being too addled to read for most of 2025 I remembered how to do it and am loving an Agustín Yáñez novel.

My bestie got her taco installed yesterday and has been sending me loopy blissed-out texts - they're giving her the good drugs.

28 (Mooseking on Jan 13, 2026 9:40 AM)

I woke up feeling creative for the first time in a while a few days ago and committed to a Roleplaying Run Club. I invited many more friends than fits in a single game, and we're using faux corporate scheduling software to coordinate a few groups to play through a one-session game, In This World, the last week of January. I'm excited to get back to roleplaying; it's been a while.

29 (teofilo on Jan 13, 2026 9:50 AM)

We finally got started on replacing the floors that were damaged when we had a pipe burst a few months ago and the new floors are very nice, much better than the old ones. They've done one room so far and the improvement is really noticeable.

30 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 13, 2026 10:25 AM)

Good news:
*My highschool friend with lymphoma seems to be beating it pretty handily for now. He's been gigging with his band and organizing his old-time musicians network. He's such a good guy, super community minded and supportive and it would suck to lose him, so I'm really glad he's doing well.

*I took my niece and honorary niece to see "Ronia the Robber's Daughter" after Xmas and then out for pizza and a good time was had by all. They have so much in common, live a block away from each other and they are my two favorite people in the whole world, and now they are FINALLY getting together to hang out and do art and stuff. I haven't wanted to push it, cause that would be weird, but I have been fervently hoping they could form a strong friendship for awhile now.

*I finally got a replacement for my Jonathan Richard Donegal tweed flat cap that I left at some activist people's apartment 15 years ago and never got back despite repeated entreaties. It was a present from my sisters. As soon as I wore it outside for the first time yesterday, the very first person I met on the street paid me an unsolicited compliment on it!

31 (Unfoggetarian: Pause endlessly, then go in (9) on Jan 13, 2026 10:47 AM)

The 125th st line is fascinating. I don't see any obvious problems (beyond the potential for disruption when it's being built).

Two points I'm curious about. First, how does this interact with transit to LGA? Would the M60 still run at the same frequency? Second, what does this mean in terms of the 125th street Metro North Station? Would this make 125th st train station much busier? Or would going to Grand Central still be more convenient for the vast majority of users?

32 (LizardBreath on Jan 13, 2026 11:06 AM)

The big change in traffic for Metro North would, I think, be people who live in Westchester and work in that cluster of hospitals and similar on the Upper East Side. Anyone else who's commuting to work in the city probably still goes to Grand Central, but that seems like a big pile of doctors or whoever who could take MetroNorth to the Q.

33 (LizardBreath on Jan 13, 2026 11:08 AM)

The M60, separately, desperately needs a protected bus lane. I think it's still the primary public transit route to LGA from the north half of Manhattan -- the new Q would get you to the Q70, but only after changing to the M.

34 (LizardBreath on Jan 13, 2026 11:10 AM)

Sometimes it worries me that NYC-area transit is the political set of issues that I find really compelling. And then I figure that they affect the well-being and environmental impact of 20 million people or so, so being fascinated by them is okay.

35 (Unfoggetarian: Pause endlessly, then go in (9) on Jan 13, 2026 11:32 AM)

I think it's good and normal for people to care most about political issues that they understand well and affect them directly. The current situation where people mostly vote based on stuff they're angry about based on watching TV or TikTok is terrible and bad for democracy. The point of democracy is that incompetent people get voted out of office, and the best way to tell incompetency is on issues that you understand and can see the effects of directly. We need to get back to the wisdom of the ancients: "all politics is local."

36 (Nathan Williams on Jan 13, 2026 11:45 AM)

The usual knocks on transit projects:
- not useful enough
- worse than some fairly obvious alternative
- cost far too much

I don't know much about the local specifics of this one so I'm willing to take LB's word that it would be useful. Everything about the 2nd Ave subway project has been astonishingly expensive, though, and seemingly for not great reasons (much ink and pixels have been spilled on the subject), and I wonder if this would continue in that vein.

37 (Opinionated Alexander Pope on Jan 13, 2026 11:49 AM)

35:For forms of Government let fools contest.
Whate'er is best administered is best

38 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 13, 2026 11:55 AM)

15 is very heartening

39 (Doug on Jan 13, 2026 12:06 PM)

The second set of P.F. Chisholm novels about Sir Robert Carey are off to an even better start than the first set, and those were an absolute delight.

https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/11/03/a-famine-of-horses-by-p-f-chisholm/

40 (LizardBreath on Jan 13, 2026 12:41 PM)

I have not heard of those, but if they're a "if you liked Dorothy Dunnet" rec I'm interested.

41 (LizardBreath on Jan 13, 2026 12:54 PM)

36: My guess is that it will be inexcusably expensive like all other NYC transit projects, but still worth doing at the inflated price. God knows I wish we could do something about the costs, but it seems like an intractable enough problem that we can't just put off building until it's fixed.

42 (Nathan Williams on Jan 13, 2026 1:19 PM)

I bet you're right.
In Boston, we had the Big Dig, which was famously a boondoggle in terms of the amount it cost (and the time it took), but it has done its job and made the city better in a lot of ways.
Saying whether it was "worth it" is really difficult to think about, especially now that it's done.

43 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 13, 2026 1:30 PM)

42: It has - except I deeply resent that public transit got short shrift and the T got stuck with a lot of debt for road construction.

Like, I so badly want to connect North and South station. It will never happen, but it would have been a huge help for people who commute using public transit from the wrong side of the city for their job.

Anyway, this is supposed to be the positive thread.

44 (Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) on Jan 13, 2026 1:32 PM)

I see no reason for it to cost more or less than the rest of the 2nd avenue project, unless something weird happens to get to that last stop on the 1 line. (It's going through a bit of a gap in a set of cliffs over there, and I don't know enough about geology or tunnel building to know if that will cause problems, but I think it's probably ok.) So insanely expensive, but not in a special way.

45 (heebie on Jan 13, 2026 1:42 PM)

I really want some regional commuter trains in Texas, please and thank you.

46 (Doug on Jan 13, 2026 1:47 PM)

40: They are! They're structured as mysteries, much less epic than Dunnett, and also much funnier.

47 (Moby Hick on Jan 13, 2026 2:07 PM)

45: How about a freeway with a freeway access road that has its own access road?

48 (heebie on Jan 13, 2026 2:54 PM)

Isn't that what people mean by "trains"?

49 (nattarGcM ttaM on Jan 13, 2026 3:09 PM)

My son is still struggling a little with some friendship group issues at school and academic confidence--he's smart, but doesn't think he is, and has dumber friends who incorrectly think they are smarter than him and put him down--but in a lot of ways high school has been good for him. He's mid way through his second year at high school, and he's definitely more confident. He's starting to realise he's smarter, more wordly-wise, and physically tougher than a lot of the kids he used to be intimidated by.*

Rugby, in particular, has been great for him. He gets to play a tough competitive team sport most weekends, and he's realised that he's decent at it, and that he can get in there and mix it. For those who know the sport, he plays hooker or tight-head prop in the scrum, which is hilarious as he's one of the smallest kids in the team, but their whole front row is made up of compact deceptively strong terrier-like guys.

It genuinely makes me happy to see the changes, even if we aren't out of the woods yet.

Our puppy is hard work for me, as I do 95% of all the dog care and the dog walking, but it is still great. She's lovely.

* he's also on nodding terms with all the wee "roadmen" as he boxes with some of them which helps locally a bit

50 (nattarGcM ttaM on Jan 13, 2026 3:10 PM)

My sister is leaving her husband, and my nephew has split up with his boyfriend. I shouldn't be saying that's good news, but both men were arseholes and they are both happier and in a better place because of it.

51 (nattarGcM ttaM on Jan 13, 2026 3:14 PM)

I'm reading for pleasure again a lot more, which is great.

52 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 13, 2026 4:06 PM)

For books in the fun side, I enjoyed Emily Austin*'s Interesting Facts About Space. Am looking to try one or two if her4 ithers.

*Canadian author, not the horrid US sportscaster/"influencer."

53 (Mossy Character on Jan 13, 2026 6:36 PM)

I, too, appear to be regaining the ability to read! It's as if something distracted us in 2025.

54 (Mossy Character on Jan 13, 2026 9:50 PM)

FWIproves to be worth:
https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2026/01/08/dan-haifley-ocean-currents-biodiversity-in-the-high-seas/

55 (ajay on Jan 14, 2026 1:20 AM)

Top story on the BBC today - the West Midlands police banned Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from watching a match in Birmingham, because they were worried about violence - a decision based on various incidents of violence by Maccabi fans when Maccabi played another match against the London team West Ham.

Unfortunately it has now transpired that Maccabi never actually played West Ham, and the police were depending on a report hallucinated by Microsoft Copilot.

56 (mc on Jan 14, 2026 1:34 AM)

West Ham, North Macedonia, easy mistake to make.

57 (Alex on Jan 14, 2026 1:34 AM)

To be fair they did riot at one of their own home games in the meantime:-)

49: he plays hooker or tight-head prop in the scrum, which is hilarious as he's one of the smallest kids in the team, but their whole front row is made up of compact deceptively strong terrier-like guys.

The classic Rugby League number nine archetype, at least before players evolved into roughly interchangeable henchblock all-round athletes.

58 (ajay on Jan 14, 2026 1:59 AM)

I'm not saying it's impossible to get to the top of the West Midlands police while having a scrupulous regard for the sanctity of evidence over the demands of political expediency, just that it isn't the general trend.

59 (ajay on Jan 14, 2026 2:17 AM)

"The bomb in the Mulberry Bush had clear prints left by all seven of the fingers on Mr Callaghan's right hand"

60 (nattarGcM ttaM on Jan 14, 2026 2:46 AM)

re: 57

Yeah, definitely. Slightly different in union, I guess, and he doesn't have all of the skills of a league 9 yet. He's a middling passer of the ball, doesn't have a fantastic vision for the flow of the game, and not the most ferocious tackler; although he will happily drag bigger guys down he's not so good at hitting someone who is running at full pelt.

He is tenacious at digging the ball out at the ruck, though, and because he's by far the quickest of their forwards--and quicker than most of the backs--he's usually first or second in behind the ball carrier when they get tackled so he's the one that wins a lot of the balls in the turnover or who makes the first pass out of the ruck. Quite a bit of that is similar to the league 9, I guess. I'm not super familiar with league.

Because of his work at the breakdown and his physique his coaches quite fancy him to end up as a scrum-half but he's not good enough as a passer or receiver of the ball to play that position yet. The adult/professional team at his club have won the RFU Championship the past 3 years, so the coaching is quite decent.

61 (ajay on Jan 14, 2026 3:56 AM)

Via the excellent blog of John Finnemore, here is an excerpt from the autobiography of Anthony Trollope (Victorian novelist, prolific, big beard, wrote about dukes and so on), entitled "An Autobiography Of Anthony Trollope", who, while crossing the United States in 1872, decided to drop in on Brigham Young and say hello.

"I came home across America from San Francisco to New York, visiting Utah and Brigham Young on the way. I did not achieve great intimacy with the great polygamist of the Salt Lake City. I called upon him, sending to him my card, apologising for doing so without an introduction, and excusing myself by saying that I did not like to pass through the territory without seeing a man of whom I had heard so much. He received me in his doorway, not asking me to enter, and inquired whether I were not a miner. When I told him that I was not a miner, he asked me whether I earned my bread. I told him I did. "I guess you're a miner," said he. I again assured him that I was not. "Then how do you earn your bread?" I told him that I did so by writing books. "I'm sure you're a miner," said he. Then he turned upon his heel, went back into the house, and closed the door. I was properly punished, as I was vain enough to conceive that he would have heard my name."

Trollope seems very hard on himself in this excerpt - I would say there are faults on both sides.

He visited several times, both before and after being unjustly accused of being a miner, and was greatly interested in the place. His mother had gone over in the twenties to help her son start a small bazaar in Cincinnati, Ohio, selling pin-cushions, pepper-boxes, and pocket-knives. She later wrote a book called "The Domestic Manners of the Americans" whose conclusion regarding its subject was rather similar to Gandhi's about Western civilisation.

]]> 2026-01-13T05:39:09-07:00 Global mess https://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2026_01_11.html#019101 Barry, in the comments: Should we have a Greenland post? Or an Iran protests/bomb Iran post? Or maybe a global clusterfuck omnibus post? Despair away, here.... 19101@https://www.unfogged.com/ Barry, in the comments:

Should we have a Greenland post? Or an Iran protests/bomb Iran post? Or maybe a global clusterfuck omnibus post?

Despair away, here.

Comments (89)

Comments on this Entry:

1 (Moby Hick on Jan 12, 2026 6:17 AM)

We may be starting a war on NATO, but, per RFK, we're ending the war on protein.

2 (Mossy Character on Jan 12, 2026 6:47 AM)

I'm thinking the RN needs do its landing exercise a bit further north this year.

3 (lw on Jan 12, 2026 6:58 AM)

More than 10,600 people detained: That's according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in previous unrest in recent years and gave the death toll. It relies on supporters in Iran to cross-check information. It said 496 of the dead across the two weeks of protests were demonstrators and 48 were with security forces.

4 (Barry Freed on Jan 12, 2026 7:09 AM)

NATO countries should place some tripwire units in Greenland and our basing rights in the UK and Germany need to be threatened.

5 (Barry Freed on Jan 12, 2026 7:09 AM)

At a bare minimum

6 (Barry Freed on Jan 12, 2026 7:21 AM)

Did everyone see this? https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mc6uzrxbas2n

7 (Moby Hick on Jan 12, 2026 7:31 AM)

Yes. He should go take his throne.

8 (ajay on Jan 12, 2026 7:47 AM)

My understanding is that on previous visits to London he saw the Palace of Westminster and Buckingham Palace, but a trip to the Banqueting House might be in order soon.

9 (Barry Freed on Jan 12, 2026 7:52 AM)

"The scaffolding for your new ballroom has arrived, Mr. President."

10 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 12, 2026 7:55 AM)

I am personally nervous bout what would happen if the US got in a fight with Denmark and official relations between the US and Canada got hostile. I can't imagine Carney abandoning NATO. And when Tim swore his allegiance to the US, he never anticipated that the two countries would be anything other than allies.

At this point if you add up the time he lived in NJ as a baby and toddler and in Sweden as a preschooler, he's spent more of his life outside Canada than in it, but if forced to choose between the US under Trump and Canada under Carney, I think he would still feel an allegiance to Canada.

Would we need to leave?

11 (Barry Freed on Jan 12, 2026 7:57 AM)

10 4 needs to include CAF

12 (ajay on Jan 12, 2026 9:02 AM)

Starmer now talking about deploying British troops to Greenland in order to help defend it. Not specified from whom.

"Against Russia, against China, or against the US?"
"Yes."

Personally I like the idea of the UK deploying troops to defend civilised people who like us against aggression. It would be such a refreshing change. If you're a Royal Marine stationed in Nuuk you aren't going to have someone telling you "oh no you won't be able to meet the local police chief until tomorrow, it's Thursday afternoon, every Thursday afternoon is Child Sex Abuse Afternoon round here".

13 (Moby Hick on Jan 12, 2026 9:50 AM)

Among the other bullshit, Sen. McCormick's wife has just been named head of Meta. The internet is basically enemy territory.

14 (Jacob Christensen on Jan 12, 2026 10:03 AM)

The *corporate* internet, that is.

Oh, and as I'm writing from Denmark - we'll be having a general election in June or September and I'm wondering what effect a US annexation of Greenland will have. (And by the way, the debate on immigration up here is somewhat to the right of MAGA. Which somehow makes the entire schlamassel even more bizarre)

15 (Moby Hick on Jan 12, 2026 10:14 AM)

An actually immigration debate isn't what is happening here. Trump is insisting on dismantling the Bill of Rights.

16 (fake accent on Jan 12, 2026 11:44 AM)

I woke up this morning and the first social media posts I saw were using the phrase "World War 3." Since that turned out to be a metaphor, the day has improved from there.

17 (Alex on Jan 12, 2026 11:48 AM)

12: Si vous etes francais, ca s'appelle un force de frappe tous azimuts.

18 (Doug on Jan 12, 2026 1:42 PM)

Anyone got a teoSignal handy?

What should the plain people of Unfogged know about Mary Peltola?

19 (Minivet on Jan 12, 2026 2:26 PM)

She's good, she has a shot at winning, she was deciding between running for Governor vs for Senator and her choice of the latter, more of a reach, suggests she's putting more stock in a wave election.

20 (teofilo on Jan 12, 2026 2:40 PM)

Yes, she has a very good shot at winning, and this race is a much better choice for her than governor. I wouldn't say it's more of a reach, though. Polls have been showing her with a slight lead over Sullivan for a while. Some polls have shown her leading in the gubernatorial race too, but that's a much more crowded field and a lot less predictable.

21 (Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) on Jan 12, 2026 5:18 PM)

18.last: pro-choice, pro-fish!

22 (Moby Hick on Jan 12, 2026 5:24 PM)

The fish get to choose.

23 (Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) on Jan 12, 2026 5:32 PM)

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1831709842/let-the-fish-who-thinks-he-knows-no-fear

24 (Opinionated Troy McClure on Jan 12, 2026 6:25 PM)

I have that hat.

25 (Mossy Character on Jan 12, 2026 8:15 PM)

||
Can anyone tell me what a "vice" is, an architectural-archeological context?
|>

26 (Mossy Character on Jan 12, 2026 8:33 PM)

https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/01/05/cybersecurity-ransomware-united-states-cyberattack-china-hacking

"Traditionally, we have a huge contingent from the U.S.," David Koh, the head of Singapore's Cyber Security Agency, told an audience at a cybersecurity conference in Washington a few weeks later, sitting onstage with his counterparts from Australia and Japan. "This year was different because almost no one from the U.S. administration came."

27 (ajay on Jan 13, 2026 2:43 AM)

Is there one that says "I LOVE WOMEN, I FEAR FISH"?

28 (Moby Hick on Jan 13, 2026 4:48 AM)

25: Loving the Romans too much.

29 (ajay on Jan 13, 2026 5:00 AM)

25 might need a bit more context tbh

30 (ajay on Jan 13, 2026 5:20 AM)

Anyway we finished watching Stronger Thongs and my god it was tedious but after 55 minutes of the final episode the bad guy had been defeated, not without cost, and the surviving members of the cast were standing around in relief, and we were thinking right, time to lock up for the night and turn in, then we looked at the run time and there was ONE HOUR AND TEN MINUTES REMAINING. So I'll never know how that series ended really, but I don't care. It's not quite "why should I care what happens to these people" but "literally the entire story is now over, why are we still seeing their faces".

Also the wee gay kid took six minutes and 55 seconds to come out to all his friends via weepy monologue, which I regard as a) an unacceptable delay during a time-critical we-are-trying-to-save-the-world mission and b) unrealistically long given that IME the average gay man coming out to his friends takes about eight seconds to say "is it OK if my boyfriend comes along as well" and everyone else has a brief penny-dropping moment and then goes "yeah, fine"...

SPOILER: the wee gay kid turns out to be gay.

31 (heebie on Jan 13, 2026 5:23 AM)

My 12 year old LOVED the 1:10 update on where the characters ended up, for what it's worth.

32 (ajay on Jan 13, 2026 5:31 AM)

If we really needed to know that (and we did not), couldn't it have been done in the proper 80s style with a series of freeze frames with superimposed text?

33 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 13, 2026 5:38 AM)

We bailed after season 2, and I bailed mentally somewhere in the middle of season 2.

34 (heebie on Jan 13, 2026 6:07 AM)

I am VERY much enjoying Somebody Somewhere right now. Very very much.

35 (Doug on Jan 13, 2026 6:15 AM)

I've not watched any of the episodes (on the one hand odd, considering I was an 80s D&D kid who remembers the Hand of Vecna from when it appeared in Eldritch Wizardry; on the other hand less odd considering my lack of tv habits), but I thought Kameron Hurley's take on the ending was interesting:

"Stranger Things may have started out as many things, but here in the end, it very clearly put a stake in the sand for what it is.
"Fundamentally, we just watched an 'it gets better' narrative for a bunch of abused kids.
"The last thing you want a lot of abused kids to sit around wondering is if it is, actually, possible for anyone to have a happy ending after all the shit that happened to them.
"You want to KNOW.
"This is the kind of ending that that these poor abused and traumatized kids needed and deserved. Life goes on. It gets better. It's worth getting up and carrying on. It's worth being here."

https://www.kameronhurley.com/we-are-the-stranger-things/

36 (ajay on Jan 13, 2026 7:01 AM)

I don't disagree with anything in that, but a quick four-minute montage would have done the trick.

And the point that this is about abuse: agree, and it reminds me of one big reason why you can't do a proper adaptation of "IT" any more, and that's because the point of "IT" is that a clown, to the kids, is something harmless that you can trust, and whom parents think they can safely leave their kids with, and the horror of Pennywise is that he then betrays that trust and becomes a terrifying abuser.
The Creepy Clown idea is pretty much entirely a product of the success of "IT" but it's so ingrained in culture now (and actual normal clowns are so rare, in fiction and indeed in reality) that we can't get away from it.
Same reason why the cliche of "circus music in the background of the tense stalking scene" doesn't work - it's supposed to be unsettling because your brain goes "I know I am supposed to be tense and scared but the music makes me want to be happy and relaxed" but the only time anyone hears circus music now is in the background of tense stalking scenes in films!

37 (heebie on Jan 13, 2026 7:20 AM)

Everyone knows children's laughter is supposed to be creepy! Also children singing.

38 (ajay on Jan 13, 2026 7:25 AM)

Look, I can't help it if your specific children are unusually creepy.

39 (heebie on Jan 13, 2026 7:34 AM)

It's just the gaping holes where their souls should be that gets to me.

40 (ajay on Jan 13, 2026 7:48 AM)

Get them to wear big jackets and you'll hardly notice.

41 (apostropher on Jan 13, 2026 8:14 AM)

Alternatively.

42 (lurid keyaki on Jan 13, 2026 9:37 AM)

Just can't stop thinking/worrying about Iran. I have hated that regime so much for so long, and yet it's unusually hard to imagine a better future right now. Meanwhile, all those lives cut short for no fucking reason. It's so upsetting.

43 (Lightly Presidential on Jan 13, 2026 7:11 PM)

Venezuela nationalized oil back in the 70s. Within the oil company I worked for at the end of the decade and early '80s (Gulf which had been a big player in Venezuela) the folks who had previously been stationed in Venezuela were particularly aggressive and generally ranged from borderline corrupt to totally corrupt. Know as the Venezuelan mafia. (Gulf was a mess in general, little wonder they were about the first mega-oil company to get gobbled up.)

44 (Barry Freed on Jan 14, 2026 5:41 AM)

Welp

45 (Barry Freed on Jan 14, 2026 5:42 AM)

Looks like I'm about to experience some of that global mess directly within the next 48 hours

46 (ajay on Jan 14, 2026 5:46 AM)

You're in Greenland?

47 (lurid keyaki on Jan 14, 2026 8:04 AM)

You & your people stay safe, Barry! Please consider using burning photos of the Trump administration to light cigarettes.

48 (Barry Freed on Jan 14, 2026 8:09 AM)

47 Thanks, first I just need to find a pair of those Alain Delon sunglasses that Chow Yun Fat wore in A Better Tomorrow.

49 (lurid keyaki on Jan 14, 2026 10:43 AM)

I'm a little concerned that Swedish defensive posturing will prompt Trump to declare himself Acting President of Sweden and proceed to mint 47 Nobel Peace Prizes for himself. When they explain that, actually, it's the Norwegian Nobel Committee that awards the Peace Prize, he'll have a stroke (I'm less concerned about that part).

50 (fake accent on Jan 14, 2026 11:35 AM)

Swedish imperialism is what got us here.

51 (Ajay on Jan 14, 2026 12:06 PM)

I sincerely hope you are not about to launch into some sort of anti-Gustavus Adolphus tirade, fa. The man was a lion.

52 (teofilo on Jan 14, 2026 12:40 PM)

I thought fa was just revealing that he is currently in either Delaware or St. Barts.

53 (lurid keyaki on Jan 14, 2026 2:04 PM)

Truly, though, I challenge you to scroll through the most recent 7 posts/reposts on this fairly typical Bluesky account (starting with "whole cabinet's falling apart") and then go cheerfully about your day. We are in a wall-to-wall nightmare.

54 (lurid keyaki on Jan 14, 2026 2:09 PM)

(Also, you have to wonder if cabinet members are desperately leaning on the blow in order to induce anosmia, among other reasons.)

55 (Charlie W on Jan 14, 2026 2:10 PM)

Not sure which post this belongs in, but there is now discussion out there on how the orange one smells. Based on his visit to Ford. Apparently he does not smell good.

56 (fake accent on Jan 14, 2026 2:30 PM)

I'm just saying that the Treat of Kiel and before that the disintegration of the Kalmar Union left Greenland vulnerable to poachers.

57 (fake accent on Jan 14, 2026 2:31 PM)

Treaty

Maybe the Treat of Kiel was a special pastry served to the diplomats.

58 (lurid keyaki on Jan 14, 2026 2:34 PM)

Surely it was kielbasa?

59 (fake accent on Jan 14, 2026 2:35 PM)

Only if it was served in partitions.

60 (Moby Hick on Jan 14, 2026 2:58 PM)

55: Death, shit, and evil.

61 (Doug on Jan 16, 2026 12:17 AM)

57: You'd have to ask some German professor, the Prince Consort, or Gladstone.

62 (ajay on Jan 16, 2026 1:33 AM)

60 to 61. (Though that seems harsh.)

63 (ajay on Jan 16, 2026 1:59 AM)

Also IIRC it was the Prince Consort who was dead, not the German professor, so the order needs changing.

64 (Charlie W on Jan 16, 2026 3:48 AM)

Death, shit & evil is adequate, as an epitaph.

Looking around, like a human, for a pattern in the mess, and it has to be something to do with oil. Not so much attempts to grab oil, but its phasing out. It can't be coincidence that the countries most in trouble (in different ways) are all petrostates. I do not know how this tracks to the US, which is highly diversified, but nonetheless.

65 (Charlie W on Jan 16, 2026 3:56 AM)

Something like:

1. Autocratic states (& leaders) latch onto resources that offer foreign earnings potential without recourse to education / professionalisation of the electorates of those states;

2. High availability of such resources helps the emergence of autocracies and the marginalisation from power of their electorates (through a reduced economic role);

3. There is a complex causal interaction between 1 & 2.

66 (Charlie W on Jan 16, 2026 4:04 AM)

I suppose there are two things to explain here, not one. The first is to do with why petrostates are often bad (although e.g. Norway isn't). The second is how and why we now suddenly have instability through decarbonisation. This second one is perhaps a bit more obvious: some countries are in a hard place because their chief source of foreign earnings is drying up; you should expect trouble (above and beyond the baseline produced by bad states being bad).

67 (Doug on Jan 16, 2026 4:15 AM)

63: Was Gladstone particularly evil, as 19th-century British PMs go?

64: KSA is not in nearly enough trouble for my taste.

68 (ajay on Jan 16, 2026 5:02 AM)

Was Gladstone particularly evil, as 19th-century British PMs go?

Not at all. Comfortably bottom-quintile, evil-wise. He was not only a Good Man but also (despite being both Scotch and a form of Progress) a Good Thing.

69 (ajay on Jan 16, 2026 5:06 AM)

The second is how and why we now suddenly have instability through decarbonisation. This second one is perhaps a bit more obvious: some countries are in a hard place because their chief source of foreign earnings is drying up

Certainly true for OPEC: https://www.eia.gov/international/analysis/special-topics/OPEC_Revenues_Fact_Sheet

That is a colossal drop since the peak in 2010-11. The drop is mainly about price - oil consumption worldwide was at record high in 2024.

70 (Charlie W on Jan 16, 2026 6:23 AM)

Probably too soon to call peak oil, but seems to be agreement that it must be round about now. Maybe a decade off. Do not pretend to understand the complexities of price, or what incentives drive OPEC production. Perhaps they're deliberately trying to make life hard for Iran; perhaps they're trying to maintain market share (against renewables?); perhaps it's something else.

Decarbonisation is pretty much agreed on as good (there are exceptions) but the geopolitics of decarbonisation - what certain countries are left with when the oil stops - just looks very dark to me.

71 (Mossy Character on Jan 16, 2026 6:40 AM)

I reject the premise. We're presumably talking about only two petrostates (Venezuela and Iran) out of a couple of dozen, whose problems long predate the present, and whose proximate economic problems aren't being caused by the price they get for their oil, but their very limited abilty to ship oil at all.

72 (Mossy Character on Jan 16, 2026 6:48 AM)

I mean, the narrow, "suddenly" premise. The resource curse is a well-studied thing, but I haven't read it. Geopolitically, I think the changes won't be sudden, and the consequences will wash out. As you say yourself, it's a bunch of overwhelmingly bad regimes. There *might* be one or two state failures in Africa, but even that I doubt.

73 (Alex on Jan 16, 2026 6:56 AM)

We're in the longest period without a nuclear explosion since nuclear explosions have been a thing: https://blog.ucs.org/dylan-spaulding/the-nuclear-testing-moratorium-passes-a-milestone/

74 (ajay on Jan 16, 2026 7:01 AM)

To put it another way: last time the world went this long without a nuclear explosion, Hiroshima was nuked the next day.

75 (Charlie W on Jan 16, 2026 7:01 AM)

Agree that 'suddenly' might not belong here. Although I would count Russia as one of the struggling petrostates, and they've received a decarbonisation shock through Europe decoupling from Russian carbon fuels more or less overnight (OK, over a year or two). There are sanctions and shadow fleet difficulties for them as well. China is not much of a substitute customer because (luckily for us) China is a leading decarboniser; they've made their bet. It doesn't much matter whether the motive includes energy independence or not: it's the fact of decarbonisation that does the work.

Still, maybe Russia will struggle through.

For Africa, what about Nigeria: over 200 million pop.

76 (Barry Freed on Jan 16, 2026 7:03 AM)

Every Gulf state has some kind of 2030 plan to expand their economies beyond hydrocarbons (whether they will work and within what seems to me to be an overly optimistic timeframe is another matter).

77 (Mossy Character on Jan 16, 2026 7:13 AM)

Russia isn't having decarb shock, it's having a war shock. Europe would have kept on buying that gas forever.
Nigeria I don't know enough about. My sense is that there's a huge amount of non-oil non-state activity that the state barely touches. As the oil declines the state will learn how to levy taxes on that stuff (if only for the purposes of stealing them) and the country will muddle through.

78 (OPINIONATED NEW MEXICO on Jan 16, 2026 7:15 AM)

*I* WAS NUKED THE NEXT DAY.

79 (apostropher on Jan 16, 2026 7:18 AM)

there is now discussion out there on how the orange one smells

This has been noted (by Noel Casler and others) at least as far back as The Apprentice. You can find multiple videos of people standing behind him at rallies who do look for all the world like they are being assaulted in waves by a foul smell.

80 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 16, 2026 7:24 AM)

79: Don't a lot of old people? There's a special odor called nominal. Supposedly persimmon gets rid of it.

81 (Moby Hick on Jan 16, 2026 7:26 AM)

She hasn't been here in ages.

82 (Barry Freed on Jan 16, 2026 7:27 AM)

80 persimmon gets rid of feces smell?

83 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 16, 2026 7:33 AM)

Autocorrect changed nonenal to nominal.

82: No. I think you have to clean your clothes. Maybe borax would?

84 (Charlie W on Jan 16, 2026 7:45 AM)

77: EU plus UK was decarbonising before 2022. Germany made an odd decision to get rid of coal and nuclear at the same time, making them more dependent on gas, now imported from non-Russian sources. But that'll unwind over time as well.

That said, I can't see how you get to say that decarbonisation _caused_ Russia to invade Ukraine, or to become aggressive generally. Will have to settle for something like: the switch to renewables takes away options for petrostates, with unpredictable results. I can't otoh see how you can say that renewables growth makes _little to no difference_, globally. The main thing I suppose I'm getting at is that the negative effects of renewables growth - that come with the deal - are under-discussed, underpriced, whatever.

85 (ajay on Jan 16, 2026 7:58 AM)

78 how embarrassing to forget the Trinity test!

Germany made an odd decision to get rid of coal and nuclear at the same time making them more dependent on gas

Former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder got himself a Gazprom board seat around the same time IIRC.

86 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 16, 2026 8:57 AM)

He's basically Smaug.

87 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 16, 2026 8:59 AM)

86 meaning to be other thread:1.

88 (apostropher on Jan 16, 2026 9:01 AM)

80: This was 30 years ago, though.

...his incontinence stems from his decades of stimulant abuse and fast food diet. He pretends he's the model of physical health, when instead his bodily functions are being dictated by his drug addiction--and he tries to cover it up. So it's evidence of his incompetence, and one of the main reasons for the NDAs. The crew nicknamed CA "The Shitshow," because he would soil himself during tapings, often after flying into a rage and cursing out the Script Dept.

89 (Mossy Character on Jan 16, 2026 4:39 PM)

84 last: comity.

]]> 2026-01-12T05:48:00-07:00 Whither the weather https://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2026_01_04.html#019100 New revelations in very old climate data. I think it's neat! For example, to get old data from Vienna, starting in 1775: This record was created by merging measurements originally taken at three different sites, according to Alexander Orlik, a scientist with GeoSphere Austria. The Old University in Vienna is where the record began in 1775, according to Orlik, but then came the founding of the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geomagnetism in 1851, and the measurement location shifted to there. And then there was one more move to the current location in 1872, so scientists had to carefully combine the three. Also I guess climatologists hate the phrase "mini-Ice Age" for the 1790-1850 years.... 19100@https://www.unfogged.com/ New revelations in very old climate data. I think it's neat!

For example, to get old data from Vienna, starting in 1775:

This record was created by merging measurements originally taken at three different sites, according to Alexander Orlik, a scientist with GeoSphere Austria. The Old University in Vienna is where the record began in 1775, according to Orlik, but then came the founding of the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geomagnetism in 1851, and the measurement location shifted to there. And then there was one more move to the current location in 1872, so scientists had to carefully combine the three.

Also I guess climatologists hate the phrase "mini-Ice Age" for the 1790-1850 years.

Comments (3)

Comments on this Entry:

1 (mc on Jan 9, 2026 6:31 AM)

It's because words need to mean things.

2 (Moby Hick on Jan 9, 2026 6:34 AM)

Data management is like 90% of everything.

3 (Alex on Jan 9, 2026 7:34 AM)

That's interesting; the "Old" University is right in the heart of the medieval city centre at Universitatsplatz aka Dr Karl Lueger Platz (yes really), but the meteorologists are up on the hillside among the vines at Hohe Warte so I'd expect quite the difference.

(Meanwhile I see impressive spam - buy ketamine nasal spray near me! plus a truly impressive array of anabolic steroids and....get this...."Frozen Chicken FEET!")

]]> 2026-01-09T05:46:17-07:00 USPS https://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2026_01_04.html#019099 There is mucking around with definitions: A new U.S. Postal Service rule on how your mail is handled could affect your ballot, taxes and other time-sensitive deliveries. The rule, which went into effect on Christmas Eve, defines the meaning of a postmark, the date printed or stamped on most mailed items. In the past, the postmark generally indicated the date the USPS received the item. Now, it will explicitly mean the date that the USPS processes the item. As with everything else, if we had a well-functioning government, we could easily imagine this being implemented in a good-faith manner. But now it seems like a pretext to lose a bunch of ballots on election day.... 19099@https://www.unfogged.com/ There is mucking around with definitions:

A new U.S. Postal Service rule on how your mail is handled could affect your ballot, taxes and other time-sensitive deliveries.

The rule, which went into effect on Christmas Eve, defines the meaning of a postmark, the date printed or stamped on most mailed items. In the past, the postmark generally indicated the date the USPS received the item. Now, it will explicitly mean the date that the USPS processes the item.

As with everything else, if we had a well-functioning government, we could easily imagine this being implemented in a good-faith manner. But now it seems like a pretext to lose a bunch of ballots on election day.

Comments (10)

Comments on this Entry:

1 (fake accent on Jan 8, 2026 11:57 AM)

The poor, neglected USPS. Not a comment after a number of hours.

2 (Minivet on Jan 8, 2026 12:08 PM)

I oppose this bad person/event/eventuality.

3 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 8, 2026 12:38 PM)

I love the USPS so much. I never understood why Biden retained DeJoy. It is absolutely amazing that we have an organization that will deliver mail to anyone in the country at any address. And we should defend the Post Office in any way we can.

I actually can't imagine this being implemented in a good-faith manner, because the date they receive the item is the only one I as a customer have control over.

4 (Mossy Character on Jan 8, 2026 2:39 PM)

I thought we had agreed mail-in ballots are mostly red?

5 (Moby Hick on Jan 8, 2026 2:54 PM)

I think it depends on the state and who's on the ballot.

6 (politicalfootball on Jan 8, 2026 2:54 PM)

3: Yeah, we're not allowed to make fun of the Postal Service any more. Just another American norm that Trump has tossed out.

7 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 8, 2026 2:55 PM)

4: There was some context to that, as it is not at all true in general. Maybe it was late in the process mail-in votes (which are the ones that matter for this purpose.)

For instance most recent PA court retention votes: Mail-in ~80-20 D, day of: ~55-45 D.

8 (snarkout on Jan 8, 2026 3:19 PM)

3: The Postmaster General is appointed and removed by an independent board of governors, and Trump had appointed a majority of them. Further, Biden was president, so the Supreme Court hadn't yet discovered that Humphrey's Executor was a big whoopsie that nobody had noticed for 90 years.

9 (Spike on Jan 8, 2026 7:32 PM)

Congress can fix this but probably not until after the 2026 election gets thrown into question.

10 (ittle on Jan 10, 2026 6:21 AM)

8 is precisely why Biden should have gone for it. A precedent by this very court would have at least been entertaining to watch them contort themselves to overrule.

]]> 2026-01-08T06:30:40-07:00 Minnesota https://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2026_01_04.html#019098 I'm having trouble making sense of the Minnesota fraud story. The two following statements are axiomatic: 1. Anything the Trump administration ever says or does is turd-riddled slop. Especially anything that gives them an opportunity to hurt Somalis in Minnesota. 2. Every large scale program will have some fraud. I'm using this CNN story as a baseline for what Serious People are at least saying about Minnesota. (I assume Walz is falling on the sword for strictly political reasons.) This is strictly ginned up? Is there any actual background story here? Discuss.... 19098@https://www.unfogged.com/ I'm having trouble making sense of the Minnesota fraud story. The two following statements are axiomatic:
1. Anything the Trump administration ever says or does is turd-riddled slop. Especially anything that gives them an opportunity to hurt Somalis in Minnesota.
2. Every large scale program will have some fraud.

I'm using this CNN story as a baseline for what Serious People are at least saying about Minnesota. (I assume Walz is falling on the sword for strictly political reasons.)

This is strictly ginned up? Is there any actual background story here? Discuss.

Comments (151)

Comments on this Entry:

1 (lurid keyaki on Jan 7, 2026 7:39 AM)

Your link is to CBS News, not CNN, which at this point might be significant in terms of content...

2 (Moby Hick on Jan 7, 2026 7:41 AM)

Temu Newsmax.

3 (Minivet on Jan 7, 2026 7:55 AM)

Not sure this is the explanation for Walz bowing out.

4 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 7, 2026 7:59 AM)

3: My sense is he's not that popular and he doesn't have a Democratic legislature anymore.

Was there more fraud than in any other place with a decent welfare state? Was there more fraud than among Republicans recipients of pandemic business loans? If yes, what are the issues?

How much of this is a political thing Trump will exploit and how much (if any) of it is real?

5 (Moby Hick on Jan 7, 2026 8:38 AM)

ICE just murdered a woman in Minneapolis.

6 (nope on Jan 7, 2026 8:39 AM)

This particular type of fraud has been going on for a very long time in MN.

https://www.auditor.leg.state.mn.us/sreview/ccap.pdf
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/09/29/day-care-center-raid

It keeps on happening. I don't recall similar allegations in MA.

7 (lurid keyaki on Jan 7, 2026 8:40 AM)

2: The irony of Texas A&M being "tamu.edu" struck me recently.

8 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 7, 2026 8:50 AM)

Not 100% clear that the ICE victim is dead, but definitely at least one shot. This is going to set shit off for real.

There have definitely been ongoing problems with human services billing here, totally independent of the Feeding the Future fraud. Per the links above, it's not like it is being ignored, just keeps reoccurring.

9 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 7, 2026 8:52 AM)

6: Until recently we had an unlimited right to shelter for families with children. The system was overrun by immigrants who had legal status, mostly as asylum seekers, but no work permits.

There were definitely some no bid contracts to pay for meals. And in an effort to provide culturally competent meals and support local businesses, they partnered with smaller restaurants to make the food. They did not follow the usual bidding process and costs ballooned. This was a mini scandal.

5: That should be the really big scandal. I would really like to get involved in some organizing that felt effective and was across state lines. My namesake was active in the female anti-slavery movements, and the regional chapters coordinated with each other. Of course, they did not accomplish much for 30 plus years. Her husband was a surgeon who gave up his private practice to work as a surgeon during the civil war (in his 60's!) and did die of dysentery.

10 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 7, 2026 8:54 AM)

8: why? I worry that the fact that a decent number of the people are Somali is just allowing/providing justification for them to gin up more anti-immigrant sentiment and to escalate the crackdowns.

11 (Spike on Jan 7, 2026 9:37 AM)

Is Tim Walz planning to run for President or does he just want to get off of the merry-go-round? I can see how either would appealing.

12 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 7, 2026 10:00 AM)

Ope, guess it is confirmed the protestor has died, slandered and lied about by DHS of course

13 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 7, 2026 10:04 AM)

10: I'm really not clear on where the whole mismanagement thing arose. My guess would be that the department has been damaged by budget cuts over the years and they try to do too much with not enough good staff.

While Somali people get dragged through the mud all the time, I believe there have also been significant problems with human services delivery in rural and suburban white areas. Certainly the cases of foster kids dying in care all seem to be white folk.

14 (Moby Hick on Jan 7, 2026 10:11 AM)

Apparently, after the shooting, protesters didn't leave and chanted "you can't kill us all Nazis."

15 (Spike on Jan 7, 2026 10:32 AM)

There is a big protest coming up on Thursday evening in Merrimack, NH, against plans to build an ICE "processing hub" there.

16 (politicalfootball on Jan 7, 2026 10:34 AM)

14: Good for them! Unfortunately the record of previous Nazis is not terribly encouraging on that point.

17 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 7, 2026 11:01 AM)

15: I'm having trouble driving at night right now. Wish some of these things were on weekends too.

18 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 7, 2026 11:29 AM)

Frustratingly, just like with George Floyd, I can't get out in the streets about this because I've got a bad leg and a really horrible cold. The killing happened about a mile and a half or so from our house. I've been wondering why we haven't seen anything happen right here, my guess would be because they're more worried about this particular area after the big confrontation outside the restaurant last year which was right around the corner. If I was more plugged in to the activist scene, I wouldn't be surprised if I knew or knew of the victim. The back of her car looked like the back of so many friends' cars -- bumper stickers and state park pass stickers. Coulda been anyone, I suppose.

19 (Barry Freed on Jan 7, 2026 1:09 PM)

Car filled with little stuffed animals too. Fuck these Nazis to hell

20 (CharleyCarp on Jan 7, 2026 2:56 PM)

I was just chatting with my SIL. She's been doing observation in MPLS, but her car has been id'd, and she's getting followed. Some frightening shit.

21 (politicalfootball on Jan 7, 2026 3:12 PM)

A noticeable downturn in the stock market tracks with the news of the shooting (one leg down after the initial report, another after the horrifying video). I've been wondering if/when the money people might decide that fascism is bad for business.

22 (Doug on Jan 7, 2026 3:31 PM)

Depends on whether they are smarter than the German money guys were.

23 (CharleyCarp on Jan 7, 2026 3:41 PM)

22 Little chance of that,

24 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 7, 2026 4:00 PM)

The woman's husband died in 2023. Their toddler is an orphan now. Heartbreaking.

25 (Barry Freed on Jan 7, 2026 4:52 PM)

Oh Jesus fuck

26 (lurid keyaki on Jan 7, 2026 5:27 PM)

A six-year-old. They just moved to town.

I wish every media outlet reporting on this would note the very well-established pattern of ICE lying about violent encounters and getting caught out in the lies. They've cried wolf so many times that I didn't consider for a minute the possibility that this was actually provoked. They got called out in court for lying so flagrantly that the justice had to explicitly suspend her presumption of good faith (another term for this but I can't recall it, sorry). You actually shouldn't give them the benefit of the doubt just because they have the clout of the Republican Party behind them. They're lying as a flex, and the poor pitiful reality-based community doesn't have to keep fact-checking shit at this point. It's fucking embarrassing.

27 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 7, 2026 5:34 PM)

The motherfucking fucking Times" "One video of a fatal ICE shooting, two opposite views." (But of course there is more than one video.)

But this takes the cake: "was the officer struck by the vehicle as President Trump insists, or did the car pass by or around him?" Or maybe it magically passed through him?

28 (lurid keyaki on Jan 7, 2026 5:51 PM)

My one defense of the motherfucking fucking Times today is that Tressie McMillan Cottom's piece on governance by content creation was far earlier and (IMO) better than the ones currently getting clicks (example).

29 (lurid keyaki on Jan 7, 2026 6:08 PM)

Anyway, that doesn't matter. I hope people in the Twin Cities stay safe tonight, but I'm not sure how possible that is.

30 (Zedsville on Jan 7, 2026 6:09 PM)

Not important but has anyone written about when elected officials started freely saying "fuck" in public? I wanted to know when it became unremarkable. Did it all happen since 2016?

31 (fake accent on Jan 7, 2026 6:16 PM)

Teresa Heinz Kerry was ahead of her time. (Link for those who don't remember when Republicans successfully generated outrage over "shove it.")

32 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 7, 2026 6:22 PM)

31: Yep. And a perfect example of discourse asymmetry. Was a massive story, while the actual fucking President gaffed some BS about how tracking down OBL was not a priority and it got much less play.

33 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 7, 2026 6:29 PM)

27,28: Kind of regret riding my hobbyhorse in the wake of such an awful event, but I was just so gobsmacked by the NYT construction. "Donald Trump says, 'No! You're the one that smells.'"

34 (lurid keyaki on Jan 7, 2026 6:42 PM)

Oh and by the way, the U.S. just pulled out of a slew of international organizations (not NATO... yet). Take that, International Tropical Timber Organization.

35 (Moby Hick on Jan 7, 2026 7:08 PM)

Trump take balsa.

36 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 7, 2026 7:10 PM)

Insane murderous administrations are my weakness

37 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 7, 2026 7:57 PM)

I feel obligated to point out that, in addition to this wanton murder, ICE also attacked Roosevelt High School today, terrorizing students and staff, destroying infrastructure and randomly assaulting people on the street.

All Minneapolis public schools are cancelled for the rest of the week because federal agents attacked a high school! It's obscene.

10,000 showed up for Renee Good's vigil tonight, and there was a big march down Lake Street, which, as with George Floyd, is becoming the center of a lot of the organizing to combat ICE. If you don't remember from five years ago, Lake is the main commercial thoroughfare for south Minneapolis, and not coincidentally, was completely revitalized over the last 30 years by the hard work of African and Latin American immigrants. George Floyd worked at an immigrant-owned night club on Lake, which is where a mutual friend met him. I don't know that I have any connection to Renee Good, beyond association with the general activist scene, but I wouldn't be surprised if a couple connections come to light later as they did with Mr. Floyd. Things are a long way from good here on the near south side, but what I can promise you is that people from this community are going to continue the fight. Renee Good's name will be honored here for a long time to come, and people are going to be out in the streets continuously as long as this invasion continues.

38 (Spike on Jan 7, 2026 9:21 PM)

I hear lots of people talking about moving UN Headquarters away from New York.

39 (Moby Hick on Jan 7, 2026 9:23 PM)

West Virginia is nice, except where there's people.

40 (Doug on Jan 7, 2026 9:32 PM)

30: Since Trump's second election, or at least that's my impression.

41 (Spike on Jan 7, 2026 10:00 PM)

Geneva, more likely. At least in the interim.

42 (Blank Starr on Jan 8, 2026 6:15 AM)

Being from WV, I'll second 39

43 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 8, 2026 7:28 AM)

NYT revealing the multitudes it contains in its coverage.

1) The crapola in 27.

2) There happened to be 4 Times reporters at the WH for an extended interview so they took the opportunity to discuss and put out this mushy thing:
We Pressed Trump on His Conclusion About the ICE Shooting. Here's What He Said.
The exchange was a glimpse into the president's reflexive defense of his federal crackdown on immigration.
They did not report pressing him on his howler about the guy being hospitalized.

3) And this with a crisp analysis of the video (can't seem to do gift link on it) and a concise headline: Videos Contradict Trump Administration Account of ICE Shooting in Minneapolis

A bit unfair as it was a developing story.

44 (lurid keyaki on Jan 8, 2026 7:37 AM)

can't seem to do gift link on it

Wait wait wait wait a minute. YOU SUBSCRIBE?

45 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 8, 2026 7:38 AM)

As for the welfare fraud thing. Certainly there is some smoke underlying this fire. But overwhelmingly disproportionate coverage. It is a problem for Dems or anyone interested in actual governance that there will always be rocks like this lying around on the ground to pick up brain people with. (And Ruy Teixeira (in the Times) has the classic "Democrats beware!" response.)

I do not have a solution. Some actual rational "news judgement" and a less fucked up public discourse would be a start. As it is, it is just pure trolling from bad faith actors and the media.

46 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 8, 2026 7:40 AM)

44: Yes... for research*... and my wife is a New Yorker 9well Bergen County) who has been loath to let it go. (We did drop the WaPo.)

*You know, that blog I was going to start and which I just can't seem to face.

47 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 8, 2026 7:41 AM)

Shorter 46> yes, but I'm conflicted.

48 (lurid keyaki on Jan 8, 2026 7:52 AM)

No, this is wild. You still have an "as a longtime subscriber, this is my red line" statement un-subscription saved up? But for what?? Could God create an act of journalistic malfeasance so severe...

49 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 8, 2026 8:06 AM)

Not at all how I look at it.

50 (lurid keyaki on Jan 8, 2026 8:22 AM)

I'm just giving you a hard time, sorry. The version of the current media world without the NYT isn't exactly utopia.

51 (politicalfootball on Jan 8, 2026 8:35 AM)

50: Yeah - I think that's the thing. Among the corporate media -- the ones with resources and scope -- who is better than the NYT?

I don't think it's contradictory to say the NYT routinely undermines democracy and also provides useful information. For instance, the video in 43.3 is the best dissection of the killing that I've seen. And except for the mealy-mouthed qualifiers ("this apparently happened" rather than "this happened") the narration is mostly accurate. (But no, NYT narrator, there is no angle from which the ICE guy appears to have been run over.)

52 (ajay on Jan 8, 2026 8:41 AM)

Among the corporate media -- the ones with resources and scope -- who is better than the NYT?

The Financial Times.

53 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 8, 2026 8:43 AM)

25: It sounds like maybe she was gay and had a wife, but the father had already died.

54 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 8, 2026 8:48 AM)

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/empire-of-vice/
Empire of Vice
In a perverse twist on virtue signaling, the Trump administration is training Americans in the politics of raw domination.

Now this I like, "vice signaling" in contrast to virtue signaling.

55 (lurid keyaki on Jan 8, 2026 8:51 AM)

This is the profile in the AP. This poor guy and his kids are 100% going to get doxxed and harassed even without his name in print, because routine evil like that is... I mean, can we call it a load-bearing part of the U.S. economy? Media, use of online resources, "engagement"? Genuine question.

56 (politicalfootball on Jan 8, 2026 9:02 AM)

52: Right. I should have said: Among the American corporate media ...

57 (lurid keyaki on Jan 8, 2026 9:42 AM)

More on the economy (FF reader took out the paywall for me). The second half of the article, about prediction markets, was more interesting to me:

There is an argument made by some economists and Nate Silver that prediction markets are useful ways of telling the future because they let you know what smart people are willing to wager on. But these economists (pigeons [in a Skinner box]) and Nate Silver (also a pigeon) haven't accounted for the obvious: Being smart means getting treatment for your gambling addiction, not figuring out fun new ways to bet.

...As of this writing, there is now a Polymarket bet on whether the US will make another strike on Venezuela, as well as "US strike on Colombia by...?" and "Will Trump acquire Greenland before 2027?" While it is a little funny to imagine the heads of various intelligence services monitoring outlier bets on Kalshi and Polymarket to find out whether the Trump administration really plans to invade Greenland, it also suggests that America's political apparatus is riddled with gambling-addled Kim Philbys. People have been leaking secrets on War Thunder forums for online cred for years now. What happens when there's real money at stake?

My one quibble is to take out the Tractatus riff entirely (not quoted above, but at the link). No way to save it.

58 (politicalfootball on Jan 8, 2026 10:00 AM)

I think media critics often miss something important about how they - like the media - have been brainwashed by Trump.

It's actually quite difficult to portray Trump honestly and with appropriate context -- and thus difficult to discuss the state of the country. For instance, everyone today is focused on the question of whether the officer was in the path of the vehicle. Is the ICE guy a murderer? Was the victim innocent of wrongdoing?

But these are secondary issues. If you want to understand these events and reckon with the national policy implications, here's the key question: Was the officer run over and hospitalized?

The NYT handled this poorly at the outset -- highlighting Noem's somewhat crafted lies and ignoring Trump's overt gibberish. They actually did better as the story developed -- but still aggressively downplayed Trump's strategy.

So you get this content-free headline -- "What Trump Said About The ICE Shooting When Pressed" -- on a story that characterizes Trump's obvious lies not as lies but as a "reflexive defense" of ICE. The NYT advises that Trump "did not appear" to be correct in saying the officer had been run over and hospitalized, but we don't find out that Trump didn't change his story without reading to the bottom.

But that's the top-of-front page news, and everybody has joined with the legacy media in not finding it terribly interesting. I understand why this is -- Trump's mendacity is old news. But that's where the real news resides -- that's the information that illuminates how we got here, where we are and where we are going.

59 (teofilo on Jan 8, 2026 10:11 AM)

I don't think it's contradictory to say the NYT routinely undermines democracy and also provides useful information.

Josh Marshall has made the point several times recently that the NYT is unique among the major legacy outlets because they're only a newspaper, rather than part of a conglomerate with activities in other industries, or shared ownership with various other companies. This in theory makes them less vulnerable to the sorts of political pressures that affect outlets whose owners are worried about administration policies affecting their other lines of business. (In practice obviously they're still vulnerable to pressure in their own way, but the incentives are different.)

60 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 8, 2026 10:28 AM)

59: Yeah, the ~~phone call~~ editorial direction is coming from inside the house.

Amongst all the complicated things about the NYT, media in general, and our discourse, a reason I really focus on the Times is that they are in fact the "newspaper of record" for our wonderful little nation state. For better or worse. And I think they are often a reflection rather than a cause of a lot of bullshit, but of course do have massive agency.

It's complicated.

61 (politicalfootball on Jan 8, 2026 11:04 AM)

Sometimes in conversation, the NYT operates as a synechdoche for the entire corporate media world. But I think it's also true that if the NYT changed its practices, a lot of the other media would follow along.

62 (ajay on Jan 8, 2026 12:19 PM)

56: why?

63 (JRoth on Jan 8, 2026 12:24 PM)

To the (now-largely superseded) OP: Apparently, before the story went national MN Dems were significantly negative on the story. That is, local partisans read local news and concluded that the Walz admin fucked up.

AFAICT, the racial aspect of the story is mostly ginned up, but "there was massive*, obvious** fraud that the admin took over a year to address" is a factual statement.

If you support social spending, the options are 1. spend resources rooting out significant fraud, or 2. have fraud discovered by opponents who will use it to discredit both you and social spending. There's no "just don't let fraud happen" or "convince taxpayers fraud doesn't matter" option.

Obv bad faith ppl will point to de minimus fraud, but taxpayers broadly don't care abt those things (if they did, no social spending at all would happen).

*tens of millions? A lot in terms of state budgets, esp the social services parts that aren't in the billions

**one org claimed to be serving over 1,000 meals per day from a storefront with a staff of 2 or 3. That's over a meal per minute, 16 hours/day

64 (Alex on Jan 8, 2026 2:18 PM)

The Guardian, the BBC, and Le Monde often operate by sort of hobbling pitiably along after the NYT a few days later, and a lot of other media at one more remove, so it's globally important. Especially as a lot of media that despises the NYT defines its own identity by reference to it.

The tragedy is that our war on the NYT Styles page failed. The whole of the paper is now the Styles page, and the rest of the world is either imitators or trolls.

65 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 8, 2026 2:25 PM)

I agree substantively with 63 but must add that if you are an R you get 10-1000 times more rope than a D or any good faith actor.

66 (politicalfootball on Jan 8, 2026 2:56 PM)

62: FT is owned by Japan's Nikkei Inc.

67 (Alex on Jan 8, 2026 3:27 PM)

The horror! The FT is a tool of....Big Japanese Newspaper That's Eventually Owned By Its Journalists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikkei,_Inc.

68 ( politicalfootball on Jan 8, 2026 4:26 PM)

I actually was surprised when I looked it up that it wasn't still Pearson. But anyway, it ain't American.

69 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 8, 2026 5:11 PM)

More shootings. This time it's border patrol in Portland, Oregon.

https://www.opb.org/article/2026/01/08/portland-shooting-federal-agents/

70 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 8, 2026 7:56 PM)

64: The Guardian did sit down and do the actual journalistic work of figuring out how many people are killed by the police in this country every year, which the NYT could have very easily been doing for decades, but never bothered.

This is a very angry, activated city right now. Two people who are part of my extended queer/activist/music community were arrested by ICE today in St. Paul, apparently just for getting in the face of some agents doing a random snatch off the street. One of them had multiple bones broken in her hand. Meanwhile, residents of Little Earth of the United Tribes, the majority-indigenous housing project in my neighborhood were confronting ICE agents who were sneaking around the back of the project's property to lie in wait for people to disappear. And a Somali Uber driver at the airport confronted, all alone, ICE agents hassling him for ID. Multiple protests were held today around the cities, and a barricade has been built at the site of the murder. We are not going to just let this shit go.

71 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 8, 2026 8:27 PM)

63: Yeah, that's probably true as far as it goes, but as I mentioned above, the dysfunction at that agency predates Walz by quite a bit. I'm sure it's a pattern familiar to many in politically divided states: Democrats don't want to come down too hard on the agency because it's a Democratic bastion and because it gives Republicans ammunition for cutting social benefits. And Republicans don't want anything to improve because it's convenient for their outrage machine to have a purveyor of social benefits that they can consistently demonize and threaten.

72 (ajay on Jan 8, 2026 11:02 PM)

68 but that's my point. Why is it so important to you that your daily newspaper should be owned by an American company? The FT has perfectly good US coverage as far as I can tell. Yes, it has a lot of UK coverthat you presumably aren't very interested in, but you don't have to read that if you don't want to.

73 ( politicalfootball on Jan 9, 2026 3:35 AM)

72: Ah, OK. I'm seeing the miscommunication here.

68 does, in fact, makes your point, because I agree with your point. (Read 56 again with that in mind. I'm correcting myself, not you.)

Coverage of the US by the US corporate media (I contend) should be considered as a separate class because it's systematically inferior to coverage by foreign media.

74 (ajay on Jan 9, 2026 3:52 AM)

73 ah, understood

75 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 9, 2026 5:27 AM)

Well if you were wondering what the front page of the paper of record would look like when an attempted dictatorship came to the US wonder no more. To be fair this is about 3/4 of the page--one column to the left cut off (about Minnesota ICE shooting) and some stories at the bottom. Also the digital version does not have these interview stories front and center.

And the content is pretty dreadful, The story on the left is written with the awe and wonder of Disneyphiles getting a backroom tour of the Magic Kingdom, and the one the right is a masterpiece of sane-washing:

When asked why he needed to possess the territory, he said: "Because that's what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can't do, whether you're talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can't get from just signing a document."

The conversation made clear that in Mr. Trump's view, sovereignty and national borders are less important than the singular role the United States plays as the protector of the West.

Protecting "the West" !

OK. I promise I will not comment about the Times for like a week (unless I really have to...). I do need to free up that blog so I have an outlet.

Final note: I often see the Times as less of a synecdoche for the overall media, and more so for entrenched American "elites" in general.

76 (ajay on Jan 9, 2026 5:49 AM)

75 is shocking. The sign of a paper that has completely lost any self-respect and is left with merely self-regard.

The British media are, to put it meiotically, not great (with some exceptions) but I will say this: no British paper would ever run a front-page headline as crap as "PRESIDENTIAL HOST WITH REPERTOIRE OF PERSONAS".

77 (ajay on Jan 9, 2026 6:13 AM)

On the original incident, I finally got round to watching the videos: Ross, the shooter, fires one-handed, and do you know why? Because he's filming everything going on with his iPhone in the other hand.

78 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 9, 2026 7:57 AM)

77: if you see the footage of the assault on Roosevelt High School, there's some real Keystone Cops moments when the ICE bullies are flailing away at a crowd of students who are just yelling and taking videos. Completely ridiculous.

Lots of ICE activity in my little neighborhood this morning. Someone got grabbed 2 blocks away and there was prolonged honking indicating ICE vehicles being tracked right outside the house.

79 (Moby Hick on Jan 9, 2026 8:55 AM)

I think the reason I prefer police procedurals that are either very old or British is that my willing suspension of disbelief about the character and capabilities of law enforcement requires distance to function.

80 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 9, 2026 9:18 AM)

Statement from Renee Good's wife that clears up a bit of a ambiguity:
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/01/09/renee-goods-wife-releases-statement-about-ice-shooting

81 (Minivet on Jan 9, 2026 10:53 AM)

What ambiguity?

It seems they have released the murderer's video which is even more inculpatory.

82 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 9, 2026 11:01 AM)

81: initially people thought she was a widowed solo parent.

83 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 9, 2026 11:07 AM)

This video is even more horrifying than the other ones I saw.

https://bsky.app/profile/thetnholler.bsky.social/post/3mbz3va3en22e

Is this what the ICE agent was filming himself?

84 (Minivet on Jan 9, 2026 11:15 AM)

Oh I see.

I'm not clicking on 83 but my understanding is yes, the new thing this morning is what he was filming, either bodycam or handphone.

85 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 9, 2026 11:21 AM)

84: He called her a bitch after he shot her.

86 (Moby Hick on Jan 9, 2026 11:23 AM)

A jury needs to see this stuff.

87 (Barry Freed on Jan 9, 2026 11:40 AM)

86 absolutely

88 (politicalfootball on Jan 9, 2026 11:54 AM)

83: Alpha News is a rightwing site. ICE apparently thought that video was exculpatory.

Without the other videos, I guess this one more ambiguous, but the other videos exist and this mainly shows how routine the interaction was prior to the killing.

89 (politicalfootball on Jan 9, 2026 11:57 AM)

Though I should add that I've seen social media fascists asserting that the Alpha News video proves that the killer was struck by the vehicle.

90 (Minivet on Jan 9, 2026 12:23 PM)

I thought Alpha News was a fictional entity from Glass Onion.

91 (Barry Freed on Jan 9, 2026 12:36 PM)

88 this one was the least ambiguous

92 (Barry Freed on Jan 9, 2026 12:37 PM)

Just bizarre they thought that was exculpatory

93 (fake accent on Jan 9, 2026 1:01 PM)

I think it's similar logic to thinking that a finding a single minor error in a book you don't like discredits the entire book. I haven't watched the video, but it sounds like the people claiming it's exculpatory are focusing on just a couple of details (that may be false, I guess) that most normal people wouldn't consider exculpatory.

Or maybe they're trying to poison the jury pool and claim there can't be a fair trial.

94 (Barry Freed on Jan 9, 2026 1:11 PM)

She's obviously driving away and right after he shoots her he says "fucking bitch"

95 (politicalfootball on Jan 9, 2026 1:32 PM)

94: Yeah - From the original video, I thought maybe the killer could claim that he didn't see that the car tires were turning away from him (at least as regards the first shot) -- but the Alpha News video shows 100% clearly that the victim was turning the steering wheel away from him before the shots were fired.

Could ICE have been dumb enough to leak that? Maybe the killer did himself.

96 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 9, 2026 1:49 PM)

88: I didn't know that about Alpha news!

97 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 9, 2026 1:59 PM)

93: If I lived in Minnesota, I wouldn't watch it to remain impartial.

98 (Moby Hick on Jan 9, 2026 2:10 PM)

If I lived in Minnesota, I'd need a new parka.

99 (Charlie W on Jan 9, 2026 2:17 PM)

The new video is even more incriminating.

100 (lurid keyaki on Jan 9, 2026 2:33 PM)

Alpha News is a rightwing site. ICE apparently thought that video was a snuff film to share for ritual bonding and self-aggrandizement purposes, I would guess. (I hesitated to post this, because I feel like it's poisoned my mind to think it even if it's true, but it sounds like this is the response it's getting on X.)

The jury may still be out on Usha, but I think it's safe to point to VP Vance as a textbook sociopath. Really unfortunate that his unlikely career trajectory led him to this place, although otoh sociopathy can be a powerful accelerant.

101 (politicalfootball on Jan 9, 2026 2:50 PM)

From BlueSky

When Renee Good said "I'm not mad at you" what the ICE goon heard was "I'm not scared of you."

102 (ajay on Jan 9, 2026 3:24 PM)

If you're right-handed, you'd film with your phone in your right hand - wouldn't you? (I wouldn't but then I'm mixed-dominant, most people are right-dominant) So if he's filming left-handed that implies that he was already anticipating shooting, because he wanted to keep his right hand free.

103 (ajay on Jan 9, 2026 3:27 PM)

104 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 9, 2026 4:18 PM)

I believe he switches hands a short while before the shooting.

105 (lurid keyaki on Jan 9, 2026 6:12 PM)

I took a pass on watching the new video, but I have gotten sucked into reading the courtroom testimony posted to this Bluesky thread (links to article), from the incident where the shooter had a previous altercation with a driver.

I can't get my head around how his arm got stuck. He says he broke the driver's side rear window with a window punch (which shatters the whole window, generally?), then he reached inside the window to open the door... did he try to reach forward to the driver's door and get his arm stuck between the seat and the side of the car? (They're playing a video and narrating once the car starts moving, so presumably whatever is on screen is something like what's being described.) That's the only thing that makes sense to me -- with anything else, reaching through a completely open window to grab the door handle, you'd think letting go would be nothing. (I'm guessing the laceration to his arm was, at least in part, broken glass.) Maybe he grabbed onto something initially in order to a) have control of his body position, i.e. not get his arm broken or shoulder dislocated or whatever due to the motion of the car, and perhaps also b) keep trying to make the arrest?

106 (mc on Jan 9, 2026 9:20 PM)

||
So yeah. Angel's Egg is phenomenal and phenomenally disturbing. So much DNA. You know there's a story about some proto-punk band in the wayback where only 12 people were at the show but ten of them started bands. This is like that.
|>

107 (mc on Jan 9, 2026 9:22 PM)

Except they didn't forget to close their tags, because tags hadn't been invented yet.

108 (Mossy Character on Jan 9, 2026 10:08 PM)

Also, unlike punk, totally worth seeing in theater.

109 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 10, 2026 11:49 AM)

82: whether they were there intentionally as part of watching ICE or not. Posted before I saw the shooter video.

My personal read of the whole set of videos is that Ross yanked his pistol when he saw that the other agent was going to attack Good in order to force her to comply. Good had not realized he had come back around in front of the car and was mostly reacting to the other agent yelling at her and grabbing the door handle. The car was already pointed away from Ross when he fired his first shot, as he had to reach over to point it through the windshield. In any case, the Goods' car was not even fully blocking the street as evidenced by the fact that another vehicle easily pulls around it moments before the shooting, and there are several other vehicles, some at least presumably ICE vehicles, scattered around preventing easy navigation. Not to mention that there were multiple ICE agents walking around in the street also impeding traffic. So whatever the pretext for the pretext is supposed to be here, clearly the ICE agents were creating a confrontation where there was really no reason for one.

Also, is there anyone who believes for one second that ICE agents who are rounding up Native American unhoused people actually think they're grabbing undocumented immigrants? They're clearly just doing it to spread fear and chaos. But it is a stupid move on their part. Nobody in the local Native community was well disposed towards ICE or federal agents of any stripe before this, but now Native people are getting pissed as fuck. They're the backbone of south Minneapolis activism and they never give up.

110 (Spike on Jan 10, 2026 2:11 PM)

We usually have 30 people show up for our Saturday protests in the wintertime but today we had 270.

111 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 10, 2026 2:13 PM)

Finally able to stand without crutches for the first time in a week! Like the man say: You see a lot of canes and crutches on the path to Lourdes, but very few wooden legs!

There's a ceremony down the street at the Native-owned coffee shop tomorrow. Hoping to hobble over there if I can.

112 (peep on Jan 10, 2026 5:11 PM)

111::Congratulations, Natilo!

113 (Mossy Character on Jan 10, 2026 10:24 PM)

||
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/what-are-biggest-vaccine-breakthroughs-coming-2026-we-asked-six-experts
Much fewer dead babies!
|>

114 (Alex on Jan 11, 2026 2:15 AM)

But who will speak up for the viruses?

115 (Barry Freed on Jan 11, 2026 2:31 AM)

Should we have a Greenland post? Or an Iran protests/bomb Iran post? Or maybe a global clusterfuck omnibus post?

116 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 11, 2026 4:12 AM)

So many things. Arson at Mississippi's largest Jewish congregation. Same place was targeted by the KKK in 1967. https://mississippitoday.org/2026/01/10/fire-damages-mississippi-largest-synagogue/

117 (lurid keyaki on Jan 11, 2026 8:23 AM)

Amid all this turmoil and pain, one piece of frivolity: Iran is actually unusually full of gryphon doors, right? Or even griffons d'or? (Silly context.) What do you all use for image searching these days?

118 (Moby Hick on Jan 11, 2026 8:41 AM)

Someone was suggesting the best way for the EU to defend Greenland is to quickly rename it "Epstein Island."

119 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 11, 2026 9:06 AM)

Or give him "the "Oh Mighty Defender of Greenland" award. Gold, of course.

120 (ajay on Jan 11, 2026 10:01 AM)

117 does seem phenomenally mean-spirited. Quite glad the poster seems to have dimly realised what an idiot he was being.
"genuinely though imagine the arrogance you'd have to have to publicly interact with real life bravery through your own made up characters/value systems"

Yeah, imagine that unbelievable arrogance. On an unrelated note, here's JRR Tolkien writing to his son in 1944:
"...we are attempting to conquer Sauron with the Ring. And we shall (it seems) succeed. But the penalty is, as you will know, breed new Saurons, and slowly turn Men and Elves into Orcs. Not that in real life things are as clear cut as in a story, we started out with a great many Orcs on our side...Well, there you are: a hobbit amongst the Urukhai..."

The tragedy of this sort of person is that they really only read one thing in their childhood, they took it far more seriously than its quality merited, and now they've been told to hate it.

121 (ajay on Jan 11, 2026 10:09 AM)

RONNIE BARKER: "Gryffindors?"
RONNIE CORBETT: "Yeah. Doors for griffins."

122 (marcel proust on Jan 11, 2026 12:22 PM)

119: gold electroplated

123 (marcel proust on Jan 11, 2026 12:22 PM)

119: gold electroplated

124 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 11, 2026 1:06 PM)

Did people see the aftermath of the kid who got snatched by the Gestapo at the Richfield Target? Messed up.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTWsRScDfQ3/?igsh=em1jc2M1OTl1ZmFt

125 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 11, 2026 3:44 PM)

124: damn.

126 (Moby Hick on Jan 11, 2026 6:12 PM)

New idea. The FIFA Federal Funds Target Rate.

127 (ajay on Jan 12, 2026 1:28 AM)

"I have asked the clergy of the diocese to make sure their affairs are in order and they have written their wills." Rob Hirschfeld, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, speaking at the vigil for Ms Good.

128 (ajay on Jan 12, 2026 1:58 AM)

119: gold electroplated

Sayers reference popped straight into my mind...

Loder, the sculptor, does have quite a bit in common with him, now I think about it: lives in New York, wealth, fondness for gold, terrible taste in furniture, tendency to commit document fraud, obscene language, violent towards women.

"Didn't he go in for a lot of that chryselephantine stuff? Just to show he could afford to pay for the materials, I suppose."

"Yes, that sounds very like him."

"Of course⁠--and he did a very slick and very ugly realistic group called Lucina, and had the impudence to have it cast in solid gold and stood in his front hall."

"Oh, that thing! Yes⁠--simply beastly I thought it..."

129 (Mossy Character on Jan 12, 2026 4:50 AM)

Their gloating vandalism is depressing reading, but the information Portinari provides is invaluable.

130 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 12, 2026 6:26 AM)

127: I saw that at the other place via an unlikely source. He was talking about martyrdom. I worry that it will get twisted by the right into advocacy for violence which is not what he was doing.

131 (Barry Freed on Jan 12, 2026 7:07 AM)

||
An Elephant Sitting Still is such an astonishing masterful debut, and tragically the final film by director Hu Bo. I can't believe it's taken me this long to finally get to it. Recommended to all but of particular interest to Mossy and lurid (the Béla Tarr influence is palpable but not at all overwhelming). In a better world we would have been able to look forward to 40 plus years of more Hu Bo films.

132 (Alex on Jan 12, 2026 8:05 AM)

To the tune of Bella ciao:

Have you seen it?/The big dead whale?
BELA TARR! BELA TARR! BELA TARR TARR TARR!

133 (apostropher on Jan 12, 2026 8:32 AM)

Just bizarre they thought that was exculpatory

I don't believe that was the goal. It wasn't to clear him (they don't have to, he'll likely never get prosecuted) but to indict mouthy lesbians disrespecting manly men in camo and send a message that any kind of protestors are potential targets. The performative violence is likely to get a lot more common.

134 (SP on Jan 12, 2026 8:54 AM)

At least two separate videos over the weekend of ICE agents telling observers, "Have you learned nothing from the last couple days?" One of them then smacked the phone out of her hands.

135 (apostropher on Jan 12, 2026 9:09 AM)

https://www.reddit.com/r/lostgeneration/comments/1qaw4fh/ice_in_minneapolis_ramming_civilian_cars_through/

136 (lurid keyaki on Jan 12, 2026 9:17 AM)

The video of the woman whose Doordash delivery driver hid in her house made a pretty deep impression on me. (It's long and feels longer-- something you set aside time to watch-- and there's a lot going on.) Part of it is the fact that at one point she is really just screaming personal insults at the ICE agents, and they appear to keep their cool (gotta wonder how much her husband backing her up is helping here, plus the neighbors). The unpredictability of the outcomes is unnerving.

"You're literally talking to her in Spanish! I hope they turn on you and take your family, because that's what you're doing to people!"
"They're separating families!"
"They took her kid!"

137 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 12, 2026 9:35 AM)

I've been wondering how to say "The Whistles and Honking Moon" in Ojibwe. As weird as it was to see the whole world watching 38th and Chicago where I waited for the city bus so many times, and rode past on the school bus every morning for four years, it's *really* bizarre to open up the news or FB every day and see government thug men kidnapping people from locations I've been familiar with my whole life.

Now that I am somewhat mobile, I need to figure out what I can do. So odd to still think of myself as the weirdo who goes to every poorly attended demonstration and then see huge crowds of people marching down the street two blocks from my house. I'll probably shop at some immigrant businesses on Lake Street today, and yell at any ICE vehicles I see. Have to see about mutual aid projects and the like too.

138 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 12, 2026 9:37 AM)

133: Also, Radley Balko had a Bluesky post calling it performative lying. They said it was exculpatory as a way of "trying to project that their agents can get away with anything."

139 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 12, 2026 9:40 AM)

One thing I often think about in the context of mass demonstrations here is that, during the '34 Teamster truck strike, after the two workers were killed, something like 250,000 people lined the streets of Minneapolis to see the funeral procession. If we could get turnout like that now, we'd be in a much better position to make demands and have them met!

140 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 12, 2026 9:42 AM)

(Of course, 1,000 people bringing their shotguns downtown for a turkey shoot might do the trick as well.)

141 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 12, 2026 9:50 AM)

I agree with 139. I disavow 140.

142 (politicalfootball on Jan 12, 2026 9:55 AM)

133: It's the classic "Bitch had it coming" defense.

143 (ittle on Jan 12, 2026 10:04 AM)

142: According to the person interviewed here, that's more or less literally true.

144 (lw on Jan 12, 2026 11:21 AM)

For whatever it's worth, the day after she was killed, I went to ICE HQ with a sign reading "Renee was Innocent", stood on 12th street, was eventually joined by a few other people with signs. We yelled some at the people going in and out that worked there, no hassles. A Meta representative went in for a three hour meeting that day. A few people on the sidewalk is too small to bother with, and I agree that the point of what they're doing is basically pogroms, but IMO a lot is up to local ICE bosses.

145 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 12, 2026 3:31 PM)

Just got back from my first trip outside in a week. Most places on Lake have some version of "ICE not welcome" signs. The supermercado I trade at is unlocking the door for each customer and relocking it afterwards. Me and two other middle class white people were the only customers there. The 14 year old Latino kid waiting for the bus didn't seem to be freaked out by me, thankfully, but there was definitely an aura of fear around him. One other big white guy was giving me the hairy eyeball, seemed like he had planted himself on the corner to keep watch. Other people I met on the street were friendlier than usual for this neighborhood. And someone had affixed a big "Fuck ICE" sign to the trash can on the corner.

146 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 12, 2026 9:59 PM)

A friend of a friend's husband got picked up this week. They've already shipped him to Texas and will be dumping him in Laos with nothing but the clothes on his back and his US mobile phone in short order. In contrast to the $1.5M that has been raised for Renee Good's family, his go fund me is struggling to reach the $2,000 mark.

147 (teofilo on Jan 12, 2026 11:43 PM)

Link?

148 (Alex on Jan 13, 2026 1:42 AM)

It has just struck me that ICE seems to be recruiting the US version of the Russian army recruiting pool post-mobilization. After running through the regular force, the Donbass guys, the Wagnerites, and then calling out the regular reserve and running through them, they're keeping going by offering literal village idiots a huge signing bonus and a gun. Similarly ICE is offering a gun, uniform, and a pile of cash to basically anyone who can fog a mirror.

149 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 13, 2026 2:40 AM)

148: The parallels are uncanny. Similarly Trump's "sphere of influence" doctrine is said to be one that the Russians have been advocating for for a while.

150 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 13, 2026 5:51 AM)

Looks like a few more people stepped up, which is good, but I expect the family"s total expenses/loss of income will be a lot more than four grand:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/standing-with-tong-during-this-difficult-time

151 (heebie on Jan 13, 2026 6:09 AM)

I think I'll start a front page post to continue Minnesota and other domestic chaos conversations.

]]> 2026-01-07T05:44:02-07:00 Finnish Reindeer and Russian Wolves https://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2026_01_04.html#019097 From Mossy: 'Santa's reindeer' are under threat. Are Russia's wolves to blame? Santa's reindeer: Having re-branded his farm "The World of Reindeer," Kujala is cashing in on the tourism boom. He offers reindeer yoga (yes, it's a thing) and postcard-perfect reindeer sleigh rides through the snow-capped forests. He sells reindeer sausage for breakfast; reindeer hides for rugs; reindeer antlers and canned reindeer meat for souvenirs. He is reticent to say how many reindeer he owns - a topic, like your net worth, considered too gauche to discuss with anyone but your closest family. But it is many. And they roam free through these rural parts, grazing as they please on frost-covered undergrowth. Are under threat: The Reindeer Herders' Association in Finland, which keeps a running tally, says around 1,950 reindeer have been killed by wolves this year alone - up nearly 70% from last year. While wolf populations have risen across Europe, the most popular explanation in Finland for the record number of wolf attacks in the northern reindeer husbandry regions lies hundreds of miles away: deep in the Russian trenches of Ukraine. The theory is that Finland's reindeer are being killed in large numbers by Russian wolves crossing over the more than 800-mile border that runs between the two countries. Precisely why wolves in these Russian border regions are crossing into Finland is a matter of continued scientific debate. Some Russian media have documented the logging industry's impact on wildlife habitats in this part of the country. A more popular theory among Finnish scientists and reindeer herders alike points to Ukraine. They say that fewer wolves in Russia are now being hunted, thanks to the mass recruitment and partial mobilization of able-bodied men - including hunters - into the Russian war effort in Ukraine. And that could be leading to an explosion of predators like bears, wolverines, lynx and wolves, all of which prey heavily on reindeer. It's a quick, interesting read!... 19097@https://www.unfogged.com/ From Mossy: 'Santa's reindeer' are under threat. Are Russia's wolves to blame?

Santa's reindeer:

Having re-branded his farm "The World of Reindeer," Kujala is cashing in on the tourism boom. He offers reindeer yoga (yes, it's a thing) and postcard-perfect reindeer sleigh rides through the snow-capped forests. He sells reindeer sausage for breakfast; reindeer hides for rugs; reindeer antlers and canned reindeer meat for souvenirs.

He is reticent to say how many reindeer he owns - a topic, like your net worth, considered too gauche to discuss with anyone but your closest family. But it is many. And they roam free through these rural parts, grazing as they please on frost-covered undergrowth.

Are under threat:

The Reindeer Herders' Association in Finland, which keeps a running tally, says around 1,950 reindeer have been killed by wolves this year alone - up nearly 70% from last year.

While wolf populations have risen across Europe, the most popular explanation in Finland for the record number of wolf attacks in the northern reindeer husbandry regions lies hundreds of miles away: deep in the Russian trenches of Ukraine.

The theory is that Finland's reindeer are being killed in large numbers by Russian wolves crossing over the more than 800-mile border that runs between the two countries.

Precisely why wolves in these Russian border regions are crossing into Finland is a matter of continued scientific debate. Some Russian media have documented the logging industry's impact on wildlife habitats in this part of the country.

A more popular theory among Finnish scientists and reindeer herders alike points to Ukraine. They say that fewer wolves in Russia are now being hunted, thanks to the mass recruitment and partial mobilization of able-bodied men - including hunters - into the Russian war effort in Ukraine. And that could be leading to an explosion of predators like bears, wolverines, lynx and wolves, all of which prey heavily on reindeer.

It's a quick, interesting read!

Comments (71)

Comments on this Entry:

1 (Moby Hick on Jan 6, 2026 6:36 AM)

No wolverines? I heard they are especially hard on Russians.

2 (heebie on Jan 6, 2026 7:03 AM)

Is that why they went easy on the Longhorns?

3 (Doug on Jan 6, 2026 7:47 AM)

Finnish sniper practice could be one answer to the problem.

4 (Mossy Character on Jan 6, 2026 8:15 AM)

Could address both the proximate and the ultimate causes, even.

5 (Moby Hick on Jan 6, 2026 8:26 AM)

Kind of topically, a few years ago on a college visit, I saw a poster of research done about reïntroducing the red wolf into Pennsylvania. Probably a good idea.

6 (Moby Hick on Jan 6, 2026 8:31 AM)

Too small to kill a reindeer though.

7 (Mossy Character on Jan 6, 2026 8:38 AM)

Is it reindeer that keep eating your garden?

8 (ajay on Jan 6, 2026 8:38 AM)

Post implies that Russian wolf hunters have more of an impact on the Russian wolf population than Russian reindeer hunters have on the Russian reindeer population, because otherwise the booming Russian wolf population would be kept busy hunting the booming Russian reindeer population, and wouldn't have to cross the border...

9 (Mossy Character on Jan 6, 2026 8:40 AM)

As if Russians have ever needed a good reason to cross a border.

10 (Moby Hick on Jan 6, 2026 8:48 AM)

7: No garden.

11 (Moby Hick on Jan 6, 2026 8:52 AM)

There's elk in the state, but not here.

12 (lurid keyaki on Jan 6, 2026 9:05 AM)

||
RIP Béla Tarr, man fuck this year already.
|>

13 (lurid keyaki on Jan 6, 2026 9:11 AM)

The distinction between "sniper" and "hunter" seems a little unclear to me in practice. I wonder what the etymologies are in Finnish and/or Russian? (I should have claimed that 12 was on-topic because of Finno-Ugric.)

14 (teofilo on Jan 6, 2026 9:26 AM)

8: Do Russians hunt reindeer? Seems like their owners might get mad.

15 (lurid keyaki on Jan 6, 2026 9:26 AM)

I suppose snipers don't usually have sniper dogs, although you could certainly put a couple of Cerberus-scale "corpse retrievers" in the comix.

16 (teofilo on Jan 6, 2026 9:27 AM)

I guess maybe they still have some wild reindeer over there. Here they're all domesticated.

17 (ajay on Jan 6, 2026 9:32 AM)

"The distinction between "sniper" and "hunter" seems a little unclear to me in practice."

Being really good at shooting things a long way away is only one bit of being a sniper and it is rarely the important bit or the bit you use them for.

18 (Alex on Jan 6, 2026 9:47 AM)

I think we're sleeping on the possibilities of having both reindeer yoga and reindeer sausage.

19 (Barry Freed on Jan 6, 2026 9:50 AM)

12 word

20 (ajay on Jan 6, 2026 10:03 AM)

In Russian the word is just "snaiper" and I Finnish it translates as "sharpshooter" or "accurate shooter".

21 (lurid keyaki on Jan 6, 2026 10:45 AM)

I suppose 17.last is also true of "hunters." It took me a second to recall the wolf hunt in War & Peace, but yes, there are maybe a few distinctions after all, now that you mention it... I was trying to fix a mental image of a military sharpshooter hunting wolves.

I've actually never even held a gun. I've been around them, because one uncle was an avid hunter, but I was more the kind of kid who would pet the mounted deer heads. As an adult, I did go out with some friends, one of whom (a tiny German woman) wanted to learn to shoot a rifle, into a field where she took a series of shots at a broken TV. She offered me a turn, but I demurred. I recall that the bruise on her shoulder was impressive, but I don't know if that's typical for beginners or just typical if your technique isn't great. I was convinced my shoulder would have looked worse, though.

22 (Moby Hick on Jan 6, 2026 11:04 AM)

You really shouldn't bruise a shoulder with a rifle. Was it a shotgun?

23 (Moby Hick on Jan 6, 2026 11:15 AM)

You need to hold the gun directly on your shoulder when you shoot. If you don't, you won't hit the wolf and, especially with a shotgun, you'll bruise your shoulder.

24 (lurid keyaki on Jan 6, 2026 11:28 AM)

That was definitely part of the lesson and (apparently) the main thing I remember. I can't swear that it wasn't a shotgun.

25 (fake accent on Jan 6, 2026 11:53 AM)

They could remake this movie, but with the real enemy being wolves.

26 (Minivet on Jan 6, 2026 11:54 AM)

Some overlap in historical militaries between sharpshooters and hunters, right? Rangers / jaegers / various types of light infantry recruited from more remote areas for their hunting and survival expertise, given more free rein than the average soldier, often doing scouting, reconnoitering, skirmishing, etc.

27 (Moby Hick on Jan 6, 2026 12:37 PM)

OT: Is anyone with some kind of pull prepping a strike or something if Trump does start a war with Greenland?

28 (Mossy Character on Jan 6, 2026 9:37 PM)

27: Starts a war with NATO. IDK.
26: Yes. eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghillie_suit#History; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sniper#Etymology

29 (Natilo Paennim on Jan 6, 2026 10:08 PM)

This Greenland stuff really exemplifies the failure of journalism in the age of trump. He spews all this nonsense about how Greenland is essential to national security, and the corporate media simply prints it with nary a follow up question. Why is the US owning Greenland so important? As far as I can see, no one in the corporate media ever bothers to ask. We already have a military presence there. We could increase that without much push back from anyone without owning the place. It's just so ridiculous and yet this absurd, pointless idea has been completely sane washed by the very people and institutions who are supposed to prevent that kind of thing. After the revolution there should be a full accounting for the media's crimes.

30 (fake accent on Jan 6, 2026 10:57 PM)

Greenland has a lot of space for prison camps.

31 (mc on Jan 7, 2026 12:18 AM)

Not after you've built golf resorts on all the oceanfront property it doesn't.

32 (Opinionated Northwood on Jan 7, 2026 12:36 AM)

Is anyone with some kind of pull prepping a strike or something if Trump does start a war with Greenland?

SOMETHING ALONG THOSE LINES, YES.

33 (ajay on Jan 7, 2026 6:33 AM)

The only sniper I know, in its literal sense, is Crom the dog, who actually managed to catch a snipe (presumably a fairly confused snipe) in her jaws a few years back. Crom is a fairly gentle dog and so the snipe was unharmed; Crom stood there for a bit with a what-do-I-do-now look on her face and then released it, and it flew off, leaving her with a mouth full of feathers.

34 (Moby Hick on Jan 7, 2026 6:37 AM)

We had a Spaniel who was not gentle. She would hunt birds and catch them with regularity. Used to leave them on the patio as gifts to us until she realized we weren't grateful. Also killed rabbits and mice. But the rabbits quickly learned not to go into the yard she was fenced into.

35 (Moby Hick on Jan 7, 2026 7:50 AM)

Apparently, sometime in the 80s, they started trying to make Spaniels that weren't natural hunters and wound up with really stupid dogs.

36 (ajay on Jan 7, 2026 8:19 AM)

Crom is not gentle with rats. A switch seems to get thrown in her brain when she sees one and she kills it in about three-quarters of a second. This is a bit striking given her general appearance and demeanour - it's a bit like seeing Great Uncle Bulgaria suddenly becoming John Wick. Everything else, though, is safe.

37 (lurid keyaki on Jan 7, 2026 9:30 AM)

33/36: I hope you're making proper medals for these achievements.

38 (fake accent on Jan 7, 2026 1:10 PM)

My family had a cat that was really good at catching lizards. Eventually we gave her a collar with a small bell so it was harder for her to sneak up on them silently.

39 (heebie on Jan 7, 2026 6:26 PM)

Reddit is saying that Russia is evacuating their embassy in Israel.

40 (Moby Hick on Jan 7, 2026 6:32 PM)

Is that good?

41 (nattarGcM ttaM on Jan 8, 2026 3:30 AM)

I let our whippet puppy (she's about 7 months) off the lead in a park with squirrels this morning. She's had a go after them before, but without anything close to success. I assumed she'd be the same again if any squirrels were around. I wasn't really thinking about how much bigger and quicker she's getting. She spotted one about 10 metres away and the thing made it up a tree about a bite's length ahead of her snapping teeth. So, the little furry buggers aren't safe from her anymore. I definitely don't want to encourage her into killing anything.

The past is a different time. Our family cat when I was a kid just relentlessly killed every day. We lived next to a set of fields and a foundry, so there were lots of voles, mice, small birds, etc to be had. Most mornings you could open the front door to find a little row of corpses, or just the spinal column and internal organs, sitting on the door mat. I only remember her getting a rat once, but it was huge. I also remember her catching a young rook and regretting it. The rook pecked her incredibly hard between the eyes, and she let the rook go and wandered about dazed for a bit.

42 (ajay on Jan 8, 2026 3:37 AM)

Oh yeah, Crom has long had ambitions of catching a squirrel, but they're too fast for her.

Reddit is saying that Russia is evacuating their embassy in Israel.

You should put this up as a front-page post. It's Reddit, it's pretty reliable as a source, right?

43 (heebie on Jan 8, 2026 3:44 AM)

I like to keep you all on your toes.

Also we had whippets when I was growing up, and that is a LOT of energy in one dog. (Actually ours were whippet-terrier mixes and they were the worst, AIHMHB.)

44 (Mossy Character on Jan 8, 2026 3:54 AM)

Aren't squirrels a pest in Britain?

45 (Mossy Character on Jan 8, 2026 4:02 AM)

More importantly, Reddit Breaking News pushes us past 40, so I can repeat myself:

To anyone watching Israel: what do you think about Somaliland? It doesn't make sense to me; hypothetical gains don't seem to be worth it.
1. Pure trolling?
2. Bases for war on Yemenis? (denied by Somaliland) If you actually need bases, why not Eritrea, like UAE did? I'm sure MBZ could hook them up.
3. Setup for a client Druze secession?

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-recognises-somaliland-somalias-breakway-region-independent-state-2025-12-26/

46 (Mossy Character on Jan 8, 2026 4:03 AM)

(Maybe I could have done that in MN, because Somalis, but it seemed tasteless.)

47 (ajay on Jan 8, 2026 4:16 AM)

43 Crom is a whippet/terrier mix - was it you or LB who had a very stupid and obsessively licking one? I think a lot depends on how much terrier there is in the mix. Crom is 3/4 terrier and so fairly calm. Garm is more like 50-50 and is a bit more neurotic.

Aren't squirrels a pest in Britain?

Grey squirrels are vermin. Red squirrels, which are smaller, are a protected species, pretty much limited now to rural Scotland and maybe Wales.

48 (nattarGcM ttaM on Jan 8, 2026 4:53 AM)

Ours is a pedigree whippet, but I think there's a huge amount of physical and temperamental variation even within the single breed without getting into crosses. Ours is quite muscular in the chest and shoulders--normal for the breed--but not especially tall at the moment compared to some others. According to growth charts and breed standards she's reasonably tall for her age, but there's a couple of whippets locally that are _gigantic_ by comparison. There's one that went to the same puppy classes as her that's just huge compared to ours, both in terms of weight and height. Some others are skinnier and more gracile than ours or that one.

Behaviour-wise, ours was quite high energy and quite naughty until abut a month or so ago, and she's now much more chilled out and relaxed. Very gentle with other dogs and children. Sleeps a lot. Doesn't demand a lot of attention. Our vet says she is very un-neurotic for a whippet and she handles injections, vet visits, nail clipping, etc without any stress. We had to take her for an emergency late night vet appointment when she hurt a leg, and the overnight vet there said she was one of the calmest whippet puppies she's seen.

On the other hand, she is obsessed by playing with other dogs and has terrible recall if she thinks there's a chance of a bit of chase and wrestling action with another dog. She'll sulk if she doesn't get to see other dogs when we are on a walk.

49 (heebie on Jan 8, 2026 5:06 AM)

was it you or LB who had a very stupid and obsessively licking one?

That was us. We had two - one obsessive licker, and one obsessively licked. They may also have been unusually stupid. This may be distorted by childhood lens, but my memory is that it took years and years to housebreak them - like 5 or 6 - and then they were regular dogs for a few years, and then they became senile and had accidents for the next 5-6 years.

50 (nattarGcM ttaM on Jan 8, 2026 5:17 AM)

Ours has a puppy pad that we put in the bathroom, in case she needs to go to the toilet in between walks, and she just takes herself to the bathroom and pees there. If the door is shut she'll paw at it and wait until someone lets her in. She's 7 months now, we got her at 3 months and she was already partly housebroken by the breeder. She had accidents for a good long while, but she already knew what the pads were for and that she should go there to use them.

51 (Moby Hick on Jan 8, 2026 5:23 AM)

Why not just install a floor toilet for her?

52 (ajay on Jan 8, 2026 5:36 AM)

50 same with ours - my cousin took one of Crom's pups, born at the end of August, and by Christmas he was pretty much house-trained - asked to go out when he needed to, barely uses the pads.

53 (ajay on Jan 8, 2026 5:36 AM)

50 same with ours - my cousin took one of Crom's pups, born at the end of August, and by Christmas he was pretty much house-trained - asked to go out when he needed to, barely uses the pads.

54 (heebie on Jan 8, 2026 5:39 AM)

I don't think we knew about puppy pads in the 80s.

55 (ajay on Jan 8, 2026 5:52 AM)

I think what this is showing is that Crom is, as I always suspected, the Best of Dogs, closely followed by Garm and teppihW nattarGcM.

56 (nattarGcM ttaM on Jan 8, 2026 6:03 AM)

Whippet nattetc is called Aja.

Named after the little girl in Maxipes Fik. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1SwNZSWW_0&t=170s

57 (ajay on Jan 8, 2026 6:25 AM)

Whippet nattetc is called Aja.

In order to preserve her anonymity, I will make sure to call her ajA.

58 (Moby Hick on Jan 8, 2026 7:22 AM)

45: I haven't the slightest idea.

59 (ajay on Jan 8, 2026 7:48 AM)

Cards on the table, I think Somaliland should be independent - it already is de facto, and is fairly peaceful and well run compared to the rest of Somalia, so cutting loose would be a good thing.

However:
2 is unlikely, I think. Israel is demonstrably already able to strike Yemen from Israel. Somaliland is closer, yes - 1800km from Beersheba vs 600 km from Harghesa. That means Somaliland is easily within unrefuelled combat range for an F-15I, while you'd probably need refuelling from Israel (and an F-35 definitely would). But Israel already has tankers, and plenty of experience using them. And set against that you have all the added logistical complexity of operating out of a foreign country, not to mention the added risks of having any presence on the ground in Somaliland, even just a fairly small forward refuelling point.
3 also seems unlikely? I can't see how setting up a seceded Druze state would be made substantially easier by the existence of an independent Somaliland 2000 km away. Syria and Lebanon and Turkey are going to have their own views on the issue which are not going to be affected by what happens in Somalia, any more than they were affected by the secession of South Sudan.

60 (JRoth on Jan 8, 2026 12:10 PM)

OT but relevant to our collective interests:

Artisanally hand-inflated penises

61 (lurid keyaki on Jan 8, 2026 1:11 PM)

45, 59: I can only bear so much news from Israel at a time, because it always seems to be 2 or 3 personnel changes away from the darkest possible timeline, but I can pass along this analysis in Haaretz. Idly pulling quotes:

Israel's role in the UAE's strategic system is non-negligible. According to foreign reports, Abu Dhabi allowed Israel to set up a military base on a key island in the Socotra archipelago, and it may be doing even more than that. A year ago, the Middle East Monitor reported that the UAE was negotiating with Somaliland over allowing Israel to set up a military base in that country in exchange for Israeli recognition of its independence. [Possibly this article from 10/2024?]

... It's not clear whether Israel's recognition of Somaliland was a condition for an Israeli military presence there. However, the timing of its announcement is undoubtedly not unconnected to the three-way summit convened earlier this month to form a "strategic alliance" between Israel, Greece and Cyprus. Nor is it unconnected to Israel's desire to poke Turkey in the eye.

It's interesting, though not surprising, that even as Erdogan was railing at Israel and criticizing its "colonialist" ambitions in Africa, he didn't have a bad word to say about the UAE and its military partnership with Israel in Somaliland. Back in 2020, Erdogan threatened to sever relations with Abu Dhabi after it signed a normalization agreement with Israel. But now, he needs the UAE's financial services.

The UAE has set up a $10 billion investment fund in Turkey. Moreover, back in 2023, it promised to invest more than $50 billion in Turkey (a commitment that has yet to be met). To date, it has invested around $6 billion in Turkish companies, while bilateral trade between the two countries has climbed to over $40 billion.

The image of the three-way summit looks just like a round of Jeopardy. How would you caption it?

62 (Mossy Character on Jan 8, 2026 2:13 PM)

Thanks Lurid!
59.2: Exactly. It doesn't make sense.

59.3: Not materially helpful; helpful through precedent and propaganda. More importantly (Reuters):

Netanyahu said the declaration "is in the spirit of the Abraham Accords, signed at the initiative of President Trump." [...] Abdullahi said in a statement that Somaliland would join the Abraham Accords

The kind of bauble that might pull Trump; Somaliland independence is also an idée fixe among some Republican think-tankers,* and Haaretz brings to my attention that it may also align with UAE's South Yemen project, which might keep it in his field of view.

*I also, tbc, think Somaliland should be independent, and think that FP article is stupid.

63 (JP Stormcrow on Jan 8, 2026 2:23 PM)

I am perfectly innocent of any real knowledge on the Somalia/Somaliland situation, but the Somaliland position has been embraced by the RW domestically. A Somaliland supporter in Minnesota has shown up several times in news accounts adding fuel to the fire on the welfare stuff and has been amplified by RW media.

64 (Mossy Character on Jan 8, 2026 3:09 PM)

Interesting.

65 (mc on Jan 8, 2026 10:04 PM)

||
Angel's Egg?
|>

66 (Barry Freed on Jan 8, 2026 11:20 PM)

65 I haven't seen it but it's been on my watchlist as it's highly rated by reviewers and critics I trust

67 (ajay on Jan 9, 2026 12:22 AM)

61 is interesting - and I suppose I can see an argument for a Socotra base if you wanted to do things like SF insert/extract and CSAR. Israel has no ships in the Red Sea that would be able to support a helicopter.
But then again, now they've got a Socotra base, why would they want a much riskier one in Somaliland as well?

68 (teofilo on Jan 9, 2026 1:06 AM)

Independence for Somaliland would be consistent with what has (perhaps unexpectedly) turned out to be the main lodestar for post-colonial African nationalism: respect for colonial borders.

69 (teofilo on Jan 9, 2026 1:09 AM)

As we've seen with Eritrea and South Sudan, you can subdivide the European colonies, but you can not annex any territory from one colony to another. The results of the Scramble for Africa are set in stone.

70 (ajay on Jan 9, 2026 2:01 AM)

This has been the rule almost without exception around the world since 1945, I think - the Russian empire broke up, Yugoslavia broke up, but there's been no annexation across any resulting borders that's been internationally recognised, except for India's annexations of Hyderabad, Goa and so on.

An independent Somaliland could be the trigger for a resumption in the sadly abortive history of Somali cricket, recounted at length here:
https://www.thecricketmonthly.com/story/1474630/christmas-in-somalia---a-wartime-cricket-story

When he returned to Alula, Collins did so in the company of Carlo, the Italian lighthouse keeper, who, he had decided, could cook his Christmas lunch, sing from Aida and Rigoletto, and as perhaps the only other white man in the immense territory, captain the opposition side in a cricket match Collins had planned. Before leaving Alula, Collins had given his sergeant, Haji Dif - a British Somali, who had been to the UK and recognised the names Bradman and Hobbs - clear instructions: "I want you to prepare a cricket pitch, for on Christmas Day, I want a game of cricket, and I intend to teach all the askaris, the Illalos, [irregular local troops] and the tribesmen the game. It will be good for them. It will teach them to play the game and all that sort of thing. Take their mind off squabbling about a lot of wretched water-holes and date gardens." At 3pm that Christmas afternoon, all was ready. Haji Dif had marked out an oval on the sand outside Collins' elegant, two-storey residenza, an imperial building erected under fascism. At the centre of the field, Haji unrolled the coconut matting to be the pitch. He was to umpire at both ends. Collins emerged dressed for the toss "in a cream shirt, club tie, cricket flannels and blazer". He led a team of ascari. But he had decided Carlo, "only" an Italian, after all, in his Briton's racist assumptions, which stretched as easily to the UK's ex-foes in Somalia as to the "natives", was not man enough for cricket captaincy and replaced him as leader with the Illalo corporal. Villagers, arranged in importance up to the local sultan, crowded the edge of the field as eager observers.

The Somalis turned out to be adept bowlers but a little lax in the field.

Collins opened the bowling and removed three Illalos with his first six balls. At the other end, an ascaro raced in, paused at the stumps - they had been quickly made by a local artisan on Haji's instruction - halted, and then threw with all his might, using the familiar action for spearing an enemy. "Shades of Harold Larwood and body-line," Collins wrote. The no-ball rule was not applied but each of his first three balls earned the Illalos four byes as they sped past the astonished and cowed wicketkeeper. Then came a problem. A delivery was somehow hit towards cover. The batters ran and ran and ran, but no fielder moved to gather the ball. The opposition captain conferred with Collins and Haji, explaining that local tribal custom decreed that Somali males did no physical work. Such activity was restricted to Midgans, another tribe kept locally as virtual slaves. What should Collins do? His answer was to replace the ascari fieldsmen with men from the local gaol, many pent up under fascist rule. They were watched from the boundary by their Illalo warders and told they must field, which they did under protest.

71 (mc on Jan 9, 2026 2:38 AM)

69 cf Cameroon.

]]> 2026-01-06T06:10:39-07:00 China trade surplus https://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2026_01_04.html#019096 Krugman wrote a two part thing on China's trade surplus. It's paywalled, but here are the topics: Part 1: 1. How to think about the scale of the Chinese surplus 2. China's underconsumption problem and the role of Chinese government policies 3. China saves too much for its own good 4. How China's government has effectively chosen to run trade surpluses 5. The Chinese trade surplus trap Part 2: 1. How China generates its giant surpluses 2. The disruptive effects of China's surpluses on other nations 3. Chinese surpluses as a national security issue 4. Chinese surpluses as a threat to economic growth I'm still confused by the 3rd point in the first post - that China saves too much for its own good. I'll excerpt that whole part under the jump. He basically is trying to argue that the Chinese government needs to ramp up domestic consumerism. I can understand his macro arguments about how things are playing out, and why boosting consumerism is the answer. My question is: does the high personal savings rate actually harm the average Chinese family? Is boosting consumerism really best on a micro-economic scale? There's increased consumer spending where it enhances the quality of life (high speed internet, goods with long lifespan), and then there's putting an Old Navy on every corner and increasing the churn of cheap goods. I don't know which one is closer to what Krugman is prescribing. It just seems a little depressing to me that the answer is basically reheating W's call for Americans to go shop their little hearts out for patriotism.... 19096@https://www.unfogged.com/ Krugman wrote a two part thing on China's trade surplus. It's paywalled, but here are the topics:

Part 1:

1. How to think about the scale of the Chinese surplus

2. China's underconsumption problem and the role of Chinese government policies

3. China saves too much for its own good

4. How China's government has effectively chosen to run trade surpluses

5. The Chinese trade surplus trap

Part 2:

1. How China generates its giant surpluses

2. The disruptive effects of China's surpluses on other nations

3. Chinese surpluses as a national security issue

4. Chinese surpluses as a threat to economic growth

I'm still confused by the 3rd point in the first post - that China saves too much for its own good. I'll excerpt that whole part under the jump.

He basically is trying to argue that the Chinese government needs to ramp up domestic consumerism. I can understand his macro arguments about how things are playing out, and why boosting consumerism is the answer.

My question is: does the high personal savings rate actually harm the average Chinese family? Is boosting consumerism really best on a micro-economic scale?

There's increased consumer spending where it enhances the quality of life (high speed internet, goods with long lifespan), and then there's putting an Old Navy on every corner and increasing the churn of cheap goods. I don't know which one is closer to what Krugman is prescribing.

It just seems a little depressing to me that the answer is basically reheating W's call for Americans to go shop their little hearts out for patriotism.

Continue reading China trade surplus...

Comments (50)

Comments on this Entry:

1 (Moby Hick on Jan 5, 2026 6:48 AM)

I have too much stuff, so someone else needs to buy stuff.

2 (ajay on Jan 5, 2026 7:30 AM)

My question is: does the high personal savings rate actually harm the average Chinese family? Is boosting consumerism really best on a micro-economic scale?

There's a very simple sense in which a high personal savings rate is harmful to you - it means you have less stuff. Chinese people would be healthier and happier if they spent their money on stuff that makes them healthier and happier, rather than sticking it in a savings account.

There's a slightly less simple sense as well - if you have high savings and low domestic consumption, your economy is necessarily driven mainly by exports, which means you're exposed to nasties like FX fluctuation and political risk, or your major customers having economic problems of their own and cutting imports.

3 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 5, 2026 7:35 AM)

I read that piece and thought it was good.

think the Chinese citizens might like to have a higher standard of living. I do worry about political stability in the long run if they resent not having more stuff.

Whenever I talk about the need to get off of fossil fuels via electrification and battery technology, Tim always points out that a lot of the metals used in batteries are currently coming from China. I'd really like to learn more about diversifying the rare earth metal pipeline.

4 (Moby Hick on Jan 5, 2026 7:45 AM)

That is a great idea, except that "invade Greenland" is a direction that discussion is likely to take.

5 (ajay on Jan 5, 2026 8:14 AM)

China has a lot, but a sensible policy would be "buy them from Brazil, Australia, India, and Vietnam" in the short term and "invent substitutes" in the long term https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-the-worlds-rare-earth-reserves/

Greenland has some - almost as much as the US, in fact. But despite small reserves, the US is one of the biggest rare-earth producers in the world.

Rare earths aren't really used in batteries very much - lithium is not a rare earth, neither is cobalt - but they are used a lot in magnets, which of course you need to build electric motors.

6 (Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) on Jan 5, 2026 8:32 AM)

Is "buying apartments in fake cities that no one lives in" "consuming" or "saving"?

7 (Moby Hick on Jan 5, 2026 8:36 AM)

Both and neither.

8 (ajay on Jan 5, 2026 8:36 AM)

Consuming, I believe.

9 (Minivet on Jan 5, 2026 8:42 AM)

My understanding is now that some time has passed those "fake" apartment buildings have largely been occupied, so what China was doing is that little-known concept "planning for the future".

10 (Minivet on Jan 5, 2026 8:44 AM)

(Not to say there aren't some such still unoccupied, since they did do the construction pretty frenetically.)

11 (heebie on Jan 5, 2026 8:45 AM)

Is the average family saving too much because there aren't stores selling things that they'd like to buy? Or because they're just not caught on a hedonic treadmill? Or are they forgoing things things they consider necessities?

Like, I get how the trade surplus is causing lots of issues, but I'm still stuck on why this is an appropriate solution.

12 (heebie on Jan 5, 2026 8:47 AM)

I get why increased consumption would solve the problem! It's just that being a group of people who are not on the hedonic treadmill seems admirable, and it bums me out that the answer is to sabotage that and convert them to mallrats.

13 (Minivet on Jan 5, 2026 8:54 AM)

One thing about consumption is it doesn't have to be goods. What if it looked like, the population gets more massages and arcade visits?

14 (Bostoniangirl on Jan 5, 2026 8:55 AM)

5: Yeah, I was mostly talking about electric cars, when he said this.

15 (Moby Hick on Jan 5, 2026 9:01 AM)

Shorter working hours would be the obvious way to boost welfare in the case of more being produced that can be consumed domestically.

16 (Charlie W on Jan 5, 2026 9:02 AM)

Imagine that the lifestyle model adopted, along with urban planning and transportation models, determine how sustainable that consumption is. Lots of money spent on excellent entertainment doesn't seem so terrible. Lots of money spent on outdoor heating swimming pools in cold latitudes; less good.

At least a bit to China's credit is how they've gone about rail and energy infrastructure. And all those solar panels are surely doing something to undermine the salience, say, of oil in Venezuela.

17 (heebie on Jan 5, 2026 9:02 AM)

13: good point! So maybe a better way for me to think about it is more domestic economic churn, in any form. Regional tourism, vacations, etc.

18 (ajay on Jan 5, 2026 9:03 AM)

being a group of people who are not on the hedonic treadmill seems admirable, and it bums me out that the answer is to sabotage that and convert them to mallrats.

I think you're assuming that Chinese people are much richer than they actually are. Increasing domestic consumption for the average Chinese person does not mean McMansions and ludicrous pickup trucks. It means "spending slightly more each month than the average Nigerian." China, in per cap GDP terms, is not a big France or a big Greece, it is a big Thailand. But its inhabitants spend like they are Nigerians.

19 (heebie on Jan 5, 2026 9:04 AM)

Or 15 seems like a good idea.

20 (heebie on Jan 5, 2026 9:41 AM)

I wasn't necessarily thinking of mcmansions and ludicrous pickup trucks, but feeling queasy about being oriented in that general direction. Like you are correct that that's the path I loathe, but I was imagining only a fraction of the way along the path.

21 (Moby Hick on Jan 5, 2026 9:49 AM)

Imagine a $70,000 pickup truck parked outside a Dollar General and the driver stepping on your face forever.

22 (Alex on Jan 5, 2026 10:02 AM)

Also another reason for a very high savings rate is that the PRC isn't much as a welfare state so you have to self-insure. That's not wonderful and, importantly, it is much more expensive to provide for anything insurance-like individually rather than collectively. The key financial product for that is real estate for the usual reasons (you can live in it, people don't trust other investments*, you can get really serious leverage on property that you usually can't and probably shouldn't have as a retail investor in stocks or whatever).

*even though Chinese developers go bankrupt with absolutely remorseless regularity, often sitting on huge sums in customer prepayments.

23 (Alex on Jan 5, 2026 10:06 AM)

BTW if you think the Chinese are free from the hedonic treadmill and making their own entertainment in a more meaningful way with thoughtful gifts, you need to go here:

https://chuangcn.org/blog/

and read every damn thing on the site.

24 (fake accent on Jan 5, 2026 11:50 AM)

I see that Substack is doing "free" posts in a scammy, bait-and-switch way.

First, I see: "Continue reading this post for free" and a button that says "claim my free post."

Then that button leads to an entry box where I can provide my email to get a "free subscription" which will then allow me to "unlock" this "paid post in the Substack app"

So in exchange for reading a "free post," I just have to:

- subscribe to the substack
- install the substack app
- use the substack app to unlock the post

And there's a "maximum one post unlock per account."

They should just be upfront and say that "free" posts, if they were ever a real feature, don't exist.

25 (fake accent on Jan 5, 2026 11:51 AM)

I mean "free" shares of paid posts. I know there are lots of free substacks.

26 (Robert Taft on Jan 5, 2026 12:20 PM)

Listen: Maybe there was, and maybe there wasn't, a wealthy and prominent Chinese-American businessman who, at the end of an illustrious career, decided he wanted to spend more time visiting his aged mother in mainland China. Through righteous displays of filial piety, he had over time, purchased a mixed use building with a storefront and several apartments, one of which was for his mother and one of which was for himself on his visits. However, his mother had never taken occupancy of her apartment, and in the interim, squatters had moved into the apartments. Not only did they move in, but they spent considerable amounts of their own money on fixing up the apartments. Now that the businessman was eager to move in himself and for his mother to move in, the squatters dug in their heels and insisted that they be compensated for the improvements they had made. (Apparently, even in Red China, possession is nine points of the law.) So in order to dislodge the squatters in a reasonable amount of time, the businessman had to pay them approximately $50,000. If course, US financial institutions are loathe to participate in transactions that smack of illegality, so the money had to be funnelled through a lawyer in China to the squatters.

All of which is to say that things definitely seem to work differently over there, so I'm not sure there's going to be a lot of one to one examples from other places that would shed light on how Chinese people could alter their consumption to benefit the economy.

27 (Moby Hick on Jan 5, 2026 12:28 PM)

Confucius missed that one, but it works.

28 (ajay on Jan 6, 2026 12:37 AM)

22 yes indeed, this too, which also predicts that the savings rate will fall very sharply as that demographic bulge reaches retirement age and starts drawing down its savings.

29 (ajay on Jan 6, 2026 12:37 AM)

22 yes indeed, this too, which also predicts that the savings rate will fall very sharply as that demographic bulge reaches retirement age and starts drawing down its savings.

30 (mc on Jan 6, 2026 2:48 AM)

I will no doubt be the first to say that the notion Americans have anything to teach the Chinese about consumerism is jaw-breakingly ignorant.

31 (ajay on Jan 6, 2026 3:10 AM)

Yes. High savings rates are not the result of an eccentric Chinese preference for high savings over high welfare, nor does it represent a beautiful disregard for material trappings in favour of the quest for inner peace and wisdom, nor is it the result of an actual law saying you must save lots of money. It's an entirely rational response to the accurate perception that the Chinese government cannot be trusted in the long term to give a shit about the welfare of its people. In 1975 everyone in China, to within a margin of error, was in absolute poverty.

32 (Cala on Jan 6, 2026 4:06 AM)

Also medical expenses and elder care, no? Which bolsters your point that the solution is simple: if China's government became trustworthy, its people might buy more goods.

33 (ajay on Jan 6, 2026 5:03 AM)

32: not just also, but probably mostly.

34 (Moby Hick on Jan 6, 2026 5:09 AM)

Maybe we can teach the Chinese to be assholes when traveling.

35 (heebie on Jan 6, 2026 7:02 AM)

I mean, I know I'm a dimwit and it's fun to be condescending, but Krugman did cover the points in 30 and 31. But it also reinforces my original question, even if I glossed over this part originally: if Chinese saving is a rational response to uncertainty, why is the answer for them to stop doing so?

36 (ajay on Jan 6, 2026 7:06 AM)

Yeah, but he put it behind a paywall, didn't he?

if Chinese saving is a rational response to uncertainty, why is the answer for them to stop doing so?

High saving levels are a rational thing for INDIVIDUAL CHINESE PEOPLE to do, but it would be better for the overall Chinese economy if they didn't do it.

37 (heebie on Jan 6, 2026 7:06 AM)

Also I like how I've been chided for being a dumbass about how Chinese are simultaneously less consumertastic and more consumertastic than my provincial mind can conceive.

38 (heebie on Jan 6, 2026 7:10 AM)

36: Are you yelling at me about the exact question I asked in the OP?

I can understand his macro arguments about how things are playing out, and why boosting consumerism is the answer.

My question is: does the high personal savings rate actually harm the average Chinese family? Is boosting consumerism really best on a micro-economic scale?

39 (Moby Hick on Jan 6, 2026 7:10 AM)

Western culture is inscrutable like that.

40 (Mossy Character on Jan 6, 2026 7:12 AM)

It isn't the answer. It's an economist's answer to an economic problem; but the problem isn't caused by economics, it's caused by politics. The solution is, essentially, for the PRC to stop being the PRC.

41 (ajay on Jan 6, 2026 7:13 AM)

I think it's more that they're poorer than you think, and also that they're more consumption-oriented than you think.

42 (Opinionated KMT on Jan 6, 2026 7:13 AM)

I have an idea.

43 (ajay on Jan 6, 2026 7:16 AM)

"Are you yelling at me about the exact question I asked in the OP?"

The one I answered in 2?

Also, not yelling. Emphasis.

44 (heebie on Jan 6, 2026 7:16 AM)

I can accept 40 and 41.

45 (ajay on Jan 6, 2026 7:19 AM)

~~Kuomintang~~Comity!

46 (heebie on Jan 6, 2026 7:20 AM)

43: I couldn't really follow 2. The first paragraph seemed tautological, and the second paragraph seemed macro-econ.

Comments 11/12 were my follow ups, but those have since been answered.

47 (Mossy Character on Jan 6, 2026 10:07 PM)

The choke point in rare earths isn't the mining, it's the processing. PRC has IIRC ~60% of global mining, ~90% of processing. PRC was able to develop that industry because it's so filthy* and low-margin no-one really wants it. Having developed it though, they've got a lot of IP and know-how it'll cost a lot to duplicate.
*So filthy, even by PRC standards, that the mines and refiners were forced to do a lot of R&D on mitigation.

48 (ajay on Jan 7, 2026 12:25 AM)

47 is useful, thanks!

49 (Cala on Jan 7, 2026 5:50 AM)

43, 44:: and that the US culture is simultaneously consumption-oriented and guilty about it, which is why Trump's asinine "don't buy 37 dolls, buy two" lands. Also, it's easy to forget how wealthy the US is; increasing consumption for the average Chinese family is not moving from basics to luxuries but *to* what we'd think of as basics.

50 (Mossy Character on Jan 8, 2026 2:34 PM)

https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/01/08/china-domestic-consumption-spending-demands/

Domestic demand has been elevated rhetorically, yet the leadership appears to believe the pivot can proceed without direct household transfers or large-scale consumption stimulus.
[...]
Sustained consumption growth ultimately implies a larger household share of national income, higher labor compensation, and a rebalancing of power among the state, firms, and workers. [and levels of government, see below]
[...]
An empowered household sector implies greater autonomy, diluting the party-state's leverage and authority.
[...]
Stable employment, improved access to education and job opportunities, and stronger social systems are all intended to reduce uncertainty and encourage spending over time. That gradualism is precisely the risk. Income-led confidence builds slowly, while traditional growth engines have already weakened.
[...]
Expanding education and health care capacity, improving service quality, and stabilizing employment all require sustained funding and administrative commitment at the local level.

Which won't happen, because the local governments relied on real estate development for income, real estate is dead, and the center isn't going to surrender its revenues.

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